B-29 Doc Visit

[Aragorn243]

I'm on a roll. Up close and personal with a B-17 last weekend and actually in a B-29 this weekend.

Doc, one of two flying B-29's is in Allentown this week. Has been there since Monday and is leaving this coming Monday so if you are in the area of Central PA and want to go see her, you can tomorrow.

I figured we'd just go, get in a short line and be in and out but it has a massive turnout so if you are planning to go, go early. We got there around 12:30 and we waited in line nearly 3 hours. It was 3:30 when we were finally standing in the cockpit.

My wife, believe it or not, loved it, not sure why, she's not huge into military things but she didn't complain about the line at all and was excited to be in the plane. I'll post some photos tomorrow when I get them downloaded. Just figured I'd get this out there just in case. I know there are a few members that live nearby.

The tour is $10 which is reasonable, they say operating costs of this are $12,000 an hour which seems incredible.

If you're well off, you can take a ride on it. Prices vary but they aren't cheap. $1500 to ride in the cockpit, a bit less in the gunner positions.

[browningautorifle]

I'd love to have a stroll inside one with an experienced guide but can't manage a wait like you had. I used to hang around the air museum in Ottawa Canada in 1979 and after the Commissionaires there doing guard duty got used to seeing me I had some unexpected tours of aircraft...

[Sapper740]

The tour is $10 which is reasonable, they say operating costs of this are $12,000 an hour which seems incredible.

Not when you take into account the extreme cost of rebuilding those Wright R-3350-95W engines. What was it, about 20 years ago now they found metal shavings in FiFi's oil which forced the CAF to ground her until the engine's could be rebuilt, an immense expense today which was compounded by a lack of parts for the original engines. The artificers had to make hybrid engines that combine the R-3350-95W and R-3350-26WD engines requiring custom mounts to be built. I heard through the vintage aircraft grapevine that Fifi's engines and props eventually cost $4,000,000 to rebuild.

[GeeRam]

The tour is $10 which is reasonable, they say operating costs of this are $12,000 an hour which seems incredible.

Seems quite low, given a single engine fighter type like a P-51 or Spitfire are in the $3500-5000 per hour.

B-29 is one of the very few WW2 era warbird I've never managed to see fly, of all the types that are airworthy (or have been in the past 40 odd years). Only other types I would have liked to have ticked off would have been a B-26 and a Zero.

I was hoping to tick a B-29 off the list back in 1997, when I made the trip over from UK to Nellis AFB for the USAF 50th Anniversary Airshow, but sadly CAF's B-29 Fifi, developed an engine fault en-route to Nellis, and had to make an unscheduled stop off, and so never made it to Nellis for the airshow.
The chances now of making it over to another show in the USA now is very slim in my advancing years with retirement around the corner, so it'll likely remain a not to be seen sight (along with the B-26 with none now flying since the loss of the CAF example)

[Bob Womack]

I saw B-29 "Fifi" when she came by. That's a big hunk of airplane. They say you have to be thinking way out ahead of the aircraft because she takes so long to respond.

Bob

[Aragorn243]

I'm pretty lucky as we have a big WWII weekend about half an hour away every D-Day anniversary. Fifi is there every year, Doc was there once. They have B-17's there every year also but none this year due to the groundings I believe. B-24's are there occasionally. I think they had a Lancaster there once but not positive. Multiple B-25's every year.

On the prices, they generate $11,000 per tour ride which I believe is 30 minutes. They sell souvenirs which do well because they were sold out of most of them. We each got a T-shirt and bought a 4 inch round patch. I'm usually pretty frugal with these things but figured if they can't keep it funded, no one will be able to see it.

The tour itself was pretty limited. We had access to the outside of the plane from the mid point of the fuselage to the nose on the right side. This included the entire one wing. The left side was fenced off. The inside tour started at the rear of the front bomb bay which we stood in and then went to the front of the bomb bay, up a ladder into the small compartment where the gun turrets would normally be but are absent on Doc. I neglected to ask why they were missing figuring at the time it was because of having 50 cal guns in turrets on a privately owned plane. The tail did have it's guns or at least what appears to be guns. Doc may not have ever had them. It was one of a seven plane squadron that had something to do with Radar and may not have actually been used in bombing.

In this position, you can look down the crawl tube that the gunners would go to the rear to get to their guns. Then it is through a bulkhead to the main cockpit area. This was about six feet and then down a ladder just behind the front nose wheel. It was short but still pretty cool. I would have liked going a little further toward the nose but didn't push it. I took photos.

[Aragorn243]

[Bob Womack]

The B-29 is not type-certified because they were never used for a civilian job. As a result, they must operate under the "experimental" category. The engineer is the only one who must be certified. The position is that complicated. They say it is confusing for a pilot to become an engineer because of the orientation of the panels. They are reversed (engineers 4-3-2-1) rather than in normal order to match the reversed seat. By the time the plane neared production they new the reversed engineer was a mistake. Instead, they should have placed him facing sideways like they did in the C-97. But the production schedule was so urgent that they just left the design as-is.

The CAF runs FIFI with a six-man crew. The FAA is often after them for that because they prefer minimum crews on planes at air shows. But the B-29 still has problems with engine fires and needs spotters in the back to watch the engines. They say that from the time a fire is spotted to the time the wing collapses you've got a minute and a half to get everyone out. The crew wears parachutes. The pilots keep the flaps up when they are on the ground because they block the spotters' view of the engines. They retract them at the first possible instant. The reverse is true on landing.

The B-29 is known to pull to one side on takeoff and there is no nose wheel steering (it just casters). As a result, it is normal to take off with differential throttles. Speaking of which, there are three throttles coupled to each control surface (pilot, copilot, engineer) which contributes to a loose throttle system. The main mounts would like to come off the ground first when taking off!!!

More, HERE and HERE.

Bob

[Flying10uk]

It looks to be in excellent condition, the B29 Doc.

[Aragorn243]

It probably is but the outboard engine on the right wing was blowing oil out the rear of the cowling.