Battle of Kansas
Encyclopedia
Project
A project in business and science is typically defined as a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems that are constituted by teams...
to build, modify and deliver large quantities of the world's most advanced bomber to the front-lines in the Pacific. The battle began as the first B-29 Superfortress
B-29 Superfortress
The B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing that was flown primarily by the United States Air Forces in late-World War II and through the Korean War. The B-29 was one of the largest aircraft to see service during World War II...
es rolled off the production lines of the massive new Boeing factory on the prairies near Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...
.
Background
In early 1941 the Boeing Wichita factory (which was intended to become one of the main assembly plants for "Project 345") was building PT-13D & N2S-5 "Kaydet" biplane trainers for the USAAF and the USN respectively, as well as B-17 control surfaces: the plant needed massive expansion to build the new bomber. On June 24, 1941, new ground was broken for what was to become "Plant II", which was to be completed in January 1943. New equipment was already being installed by Boeing six months before final completion. Also needed was a whole army of factory workers: people were recruited from all over Kansas and neighboring states. Accommodation for all of them needed to be found. Few of them had any experience in aircraft assembly and a large scale training program was required: they were expected to build a type of aircraft that had never been seen before.At the same time as the new factory was being built the USAAF started forming the foundations of four "Bombardment Groups" (the 40th, 444th
444th Bombardment Group
The 444th Air Expeditionary Wing was a United States Air Force provisional unit possibly allocated to Air Materiel Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom...
, 462nd
462d Bombardment Group
The 462d Strategic Aerospace Wing is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was to Strategic Air Command, based at Larson Air Force Base, Washington....
and 468th
468th Bombardment Group
The 468th Bombardment Group was a World War II United States Army Air Forces combat organization. It was inactivated on 31 March 1946. The unit served primarily in the Pacific Ocean theater and China Burma India Theater of World War II as part of Twentieth Air Force. The 468th Bomb Group's aircraft...
BGs.) Together they made up the 58th Bombardment Wing (58th BW), which was the first operational unit to take the B-29 into combat from as yet un-built bases in China. A fifth BG, the 472nd was also formed as an operational training unit: this Group stayed in the U.S. and was disbanded in April 1944.
With its new wing design, new type of remote controlled armament, pressurized crew stations, and powerful new Wright R-3350
Wright R-3350
The Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone was one of the most powerful radial aircraft engines produced in the United States. It was a twin row, supercharged, air-cooled, radial engine with 18 cylinders. Power ranged from 2,200 to over 3,700 hp , depending on the model...
radial engines (with new, 16 ft (4.88 m) diameter, slow-turning Hamilton Standard
Hamilton Standard
Hamilton Standard, an aircraft propeller parts supplier, was formed in 1929 when United Aircraft and Transport Corporation consolidated Hamilton Aero Manufacturing and Standard Steel Propeller into the Hamilton Standard Propeller Corporation. Other members of the corporation included Boeing,...
propeller
Propeller
A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...
s), the B-29 project was unprecedented in Aviation history
Aviation history
The history of aviation has extended over more than two thousand years from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than-air, supersonic and hypersonic flight.The first form of man-made flying objects were kites...
: from inception, to drawing board and mass production took three years, at a time when such a design should have taken five years just to become a prototype. Instead the engineering design, production and testing was being undertaken simultaneously, with all of the expected and unexpected problems, starting from the time the first XB-29 (41-1002) took to the air on 21 September 1942. The USAAF under General Hap Arnold
Henry H. Arnold
Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold was an American general officer holding the grades of General of the Army and later General of the Air Force. Arnold was an aviation pioneer, Chief of the Air Corps , Commanding General of the U.S...
envisaged thousands of B-29s, and they wanted at least 175 of them as soon as possible. The Wichita factory started producing components, then a run of 14 YB-29s in early 1943, before starting on building production aircraft by the autumn.
Soon after the fatal crash of the second prototype USAAF Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Harman came up with a plan to coordinate the process of working the "bugs" out of the new aircraft, especially the engines. The objective was to take control of the entire B-29 program of production, aircraft modification, flight tests, and training. Approval for "B-29 Special Project" came directly from President Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, who had been advised by General Arnold. In spite of this directive the B-29 program was to run into trouble.
The battle
By Mid January 1944 97 B-29s had been built by Wichita. Unfortunately only 16 of these were flyable with most of them grounded at "Modification Centers"or on the 1,626,100 sq ft (151,070 sq m) parking/delivery apron at the Wichita plant pending urgent modification. The basic design of the B-29 was sound, but significant shortcuts had been taken in the rush to get it into service, causing numerous defects and quality problems. The Boeing-run organization, which should have been getting the B-29s ready for battle, collapsed under the strain.
The biggest headaches were caused by the new R-3350 engines, which were constantly overheating. Other problems arose with defective pressure seals around the cockpit windows and sighting blisters, which needed precise fitting to avoid leakage. Also causing problems were the sighting systems (four analog computer
Analog computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...
s) for the remote controlled defensive armament, as well as the turrets themselves. Then came electrical failures, caused by faulty Cannon plugs, which supplied connections throughout the ten miles (16 km) of wiring in each B-29. Sub-standard glass in the cockpit transparencies meant the pilots had problems due to the distortion. A minor "beef-up" was found to be needed on the wing structures.
Along with the main problems constant alterations to other components were needed as the Army changed requirements and as updated components from external suppliers replaced those already in use. Finally, in June 1942 an extra complication was added when it was decided to use the Boeing-Wichita plant to build 750 CG-4 Waco gliders. As a result, the first production B-29s that rolled off the lines at Wichita were virtually hand built. It was discovered that there were some surprising weight differences from one identical plane to the next: this was caused by commercial weight tolerances in raw materials and because of the cumulative effects of small tolerances in the assembly process.
General Hap Arnold's demands
XX Bomber Command
The XX Bomber Command is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Far East Air Forces, based on Okinawa. It was inactivated on July 16, 1945.- History:...
. As he was shown around the assembly lines he picked out the 175th fuselage section and signed it commenting: "This is the plane I want. I want it before the First of March."
When he discovered two months later that no B-29s were actually combat ready, and that some had been sitting waiting for parts for two months or more Arnold was livid. In March 1944 General Bennett Meyers was given full authority to act under Arnold's name to get the B-29s modified and combat ready. Specialist USAAF ground crew and technicians were called in from all over the country and 600 workers were pulled from the Wichita assembly lines. Subcontractor
Subcontractor
A subcontractor is an individual or in many cases a business that signs a contract to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract....
s were told to stop all work on non-B-29 components until they had fulfilled their commitments.
With the thermometer often reading below zero the 1,200 technicians who had gathered at the Wichita factory and the Modification Centers were being asked to modify each bomber inside and out. Firstly the wings needed to have some of the plating removed, the required "beef-ups" were added then each piece of skin riveted back in place. At the same time the cowl flaps, which controlled airflow through and around the troublesome engines, were being modified. Each piece of glass installed in the nose had to be pulled out and replaced with new distortion free panes. After that the pressurization had to be rechecked: 75 B-29s in total needed new glass. Internally every electrical plug had to be removed, disassembled and resoldered - a total of 586,000 connections in completed aircraft, plus those on the assembly lines and in wiring bundles ready for installation.
A lot of the work was being done in the middle of the frequent snow-storms: it was so cold crews could only work for 20 minutes at a time, with most of the jobs requiring delicate handling.
Wright Duplex Cyclone engines improved
One major challenge was pulling all of the Wright R-3350-23 Duplex-Cyclone radial engines out of already completed B-29s and modifying them to R-3350-23A "war engine" standard. This entailed disassembling and rebuilding the engines with added baffles to accelerate the airflow over the cylinders, new exhaust valvesPoppet valve
A poppet valve is a valve consisting of a hole, usually round or oval, and a tapered plug, usually a disk shape on the end of a shaft also called a valve stem. The shaft guides the plug portion by sliding through a valve guide...
with improved metallurgy
Metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...
, new rocker arms (drilled with small holes, to allow better oil flow, rather than solid) and modified nose casings and engine sumps, again to improve oil flow. In sub-zero temperatures the work was arduous, especially when it came to struggling with stiff and brittle fuel and oil lines and hard-to-reach clamps, bolts and screws.
Other necessary modifications, apart from those already described, were replacing the rudders with strengthened units, all main landing gear tires were replaced and the main gear leg structures reinforced. APQ-13
AN/APQ-13
AN/APQ-13 radars were a ground scanning radar developed by Bell Laboratories, Western Electric, and MIT as an improved model of the airborne H2X radar, itself developed from the first ground scanning radar, the British H2S radar. They were used on B-29s during World War II in the Pacific theater...
radar sets had to be fitted. Finally, long range fuel tanks were installed in the bomb bays.
After about five weeks of exhausting work the first combat-ready B-29s started taking off on the first leg of the long journey to China. General Arnold had won the "Battle of Kansas" and was getting his 175 combat-ready Superfortresses.