Free Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman Page B

creating a visible slot between the flaps and the wings. The device actually increased the wing area by 20 percent, in addition to increasing the wing’s lift. More wing area, noted George Schairer with satisfaction, also meant more range and a bigger load capacity—not just more bombs but more armored protection for the crews.
    Flaps like those on the B-29 are now standard for big jet propulsion planes. But in 1941 they were a breathtaking revolution, one that expanded the envelope of the standard four-engine bomber. Together with a heavy aluminum beam called the spar chord inserted through the heart of each wing, it enabled Boeing to guarantee that this plane would carry a high wing loading of sixty-nine pounds per square foot. 27
    Impossible, exploded the Air Corps engineers. No plane could sustain flight under that kind of wing load. They dragged Wells, Schairer, and their boss, Wellwood Beall, out to Wright Field in March to show them the error of their ways by running the numbers on a hypothetical airplane called “Design X.” Wells patiently explained why they thoughta real B-29 would do better than Design X. The Army engineers listened, and backed off. The Boeing men returned to Seattle. 28
    On May 17, 1941, Boeing’s president got a letter placing a provisional order for 250 B-29s, with a production goal of 25 B-29s per month by February 1943. Ten million dollars would be advanced for development, with $3.5 million for expanded plant facilities. 29 The XB-29 was now the YB-29, and its first three prototypes would be the templates for a warplane whose orders would rapidly expand when war came in December.
    Considering that Boeing was already working flat-out to produce its B-17s, the fact that the first prototype rolled onto the runway in early August 1942 was a considerable achievement. It was a stunning sight. Ninety-nine feet long and weighing fifty-eight tons fully loaded, it had a 141-foot wingspan—almost half a football field. Balanced on its tricycle landing gear, its long olive-drab fuselage stood nearly 30 feet high. A B-17 sitting on the ground was only 19 feet high. Yet somehow the YB-29’s four Wright Cyclone R-3350 engines would give this gargantuan beast a cruising speed of 357 miles per hour—70 miles an hour faster than the Flying Fortress—and a ceiling of 31,000 feet—plus an unheard-of range of 5,330 miles, enough to go from San Francisco to New York and back in one trip.
    Two more prototypes were finished by September. Still, Boeing had warned the Army that it would take at least two hundred hours of engine tests before any of them were ready for flight. Almost nine hundred different engineering changes had been made by September 9, 1942, when the engines were revved up for the first time and the plane was given its first taxi test. 30 On the fifteenth, the engines got still more tests and the plane was put through a series of “hops” fifteen feet off the runway, to test the landing gear.
    Then on September 21, 1942, Boeing’s test pilot Eddie Allen climbed into the cockpit of XB-29 41-002 and at 3:40 P.M . was airborne. One hour and fifteen minutes later, the plane flashed over the field, flared out, and dropped her Fowler flaps, then her wheels touched down with a screech. Allen climbed out and was surrounded by a crowd of engineers, designers, and mechanics. “Well, she flew,” he said, and broke into a broad smile. 31
    By that date, some 1,664 Superfortresses were on the order book. Designing and building the prototype had been the easy part. Manufacturing them would be another matter.
    First problem was where. Boeing plants were slammed building B-17s, a production program that had spilled over to Vega and Douglas. Those two firms, Boeing’s erstwhile competitors, would produce the so-called BVD Flying Fortresses, more than eleven hundred of them. 32 The only solution seemed to be for Boeing and its subcontractors to set up entirely new production plants to build the B-29