THE LAST SUPERFORTRESS
THE LAST SUPERFORTRESS
"Fifi," Boeing B-29
Superfortress SN44-62070, is the only one of her type still flying.
Nearly 4,000 of these aircraft were produced between September, 1943, and May, 1946.
They served in World War II, the Korean War, and with the RAF (Royal Air Force) until 1958. She is the only aircraft to have dropped a nuclear bomb during wartime. May that distinction always be hers alone.
“...when the Korean War ended on 27 July 1953, the B-29 was quite obviously an obsolete weapon...The aircraft belonged to the 1940s, to an age before the jet fighter, radar-controlled defenses and superpower confrontation. The B-29 contributed to containment in Korea, but this was not a fitting end to the aircraft’s career. Its true worth lay in 1945 and not in 1950. It belonged to the total war conditions of the conflict with Japan, not to the infinitely more subtle and potentially dangerous climate of the Cold War.”John Pimlott, B-29 Superfortress, ISBN 0-89009-319-9.
In early 1971, Confederate Air Force (CAF) volunteers learned that a group of B-29s were moldering in the desert at a Navy weapons center near China Lake, California. They had been parked there since 1954, used as targets for gunnery practice and abused by heat, sand and vandals. The Air Force still owned the China Lake B-29s, but the Navy had to agree to release one. A paperwork storm ensued, negotiations followed, but the CAF eventually became the owner of B-29 SN44-62070. In less than nine weeks a CAF maintenance team had revived her, restoring all systems and controls, installing instruments, replacing fuel, oil, and hydraulic hoses. Engines were run, propellers and landing gear tested, new window bubbles made.
By 3 August 1971 she was ready to fly again, but one more bureacratic hurdle remained. It was not without risk.
Navy regulations did not permit a single test flight: once she was airborne she could not return to China Lake. The crew took on enough fuel to fly 1,250 miles non-stop to CAF Headquarters in Harlingen, Texas, and made the six-hour and 38-minute flight without incident. Once in Harlingen, her complete restoration to airworthiness took CAF volunteers more than three years of fund raising and hard work. At a christening ceremony in late 1974, the resurrected B-29 became "Fifi" and she took her place in the Ghost Squadron of CAF World War II fighters and bombers. She lives again to preserve the memories and lessons of history's greatest armed conflict.
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The view from the flight deck (left); flight engineer's station (right). |
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LEST WE FORGET