The last half of a two and half hour line
The line up to see the plane was very long and the sun was bearing down pretty good. Lots of people bailed up to hour and half in.
The last 45 minutes or so were at least under the wing, in the shade.
The 4 engines on the B 29 are each 2000 hp radial engines. I overheard someone say that it costs 1200 per flight hour to run (I imagine including fuel, wages, and maintincace).
Another of the major first of this plane was the remote control defenses. The plane had 4 gunner sights that were connected to all the turrets (with the exception of the rear gun which was dedicated to the rear gunner position).
The top bubble housed the fire controller/ top gunner he controlled the distribution of the turrets and watched above the plane.
The left side gun sight.
The guns were controlled by a analog electro-mechanical computer which took into account range, altitude, temperature, and humidity. The range was calculated by the gunner enterering the wingspane of the attacking plane and then keeping two markers on there sight at the wingtips.
The side and top gunner postions.
That is a very specific instruction
You can see the side and top gunner postions.
The plane as two bomb bay doors which in standard configuration could car 20 thousand pounds of bombs. The two bays are separated on either side of the wings allowing a single set of spars to be used for the wings with them running between the bomb bays.
To allow travel between both sides of the plane there is a tub running between them that is pressurized. That can be seen in the above photo and below.
Tube connecting the front and back. As well the the nav domb
Got to walk through the cockpit quickly. There were two pilot , flight engineer, navigator, and bomb-eider/front gunner.
