AIRCRAFT WALK-AROUND No 65054 B-29 SUPERFORTRESS (Hbk)

Equipped with pressurized cabins for high-altitude effectiveness, with an electronic fire-control system, and remote-controlled machine gun turrets, the B-29 Superfortress was the most advanced aircraft of WWII. Two of those planes, the Superfortresses Enola Gay and Bockscar, dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Yet over all, the B-29 received less notoriety than its storied elder siblings, the B-17 and B-24, perhaps because its service areas - the China, Burma, and India Theatre and the Western Pacific - were less publicized than was the war in Europe. Designed by Boeing, nearly 4,000 B-29s had been turned out by the time production ended in 1946. Yet today, only a few meticulously restored and preserved examples of the historic aircraft survive. A unique look at the plane that ushered in the nuclear age.