How rare?? It's one of the last two functioning models remaining on Earth! See, most folks on Steemit know me for my nature posts and some travel stories, but I'm also a big history buff. I've always enjoyed military history, especially the US Civil War and both World Wars. Earlier today, I went to a massive event called "WWII Weekend" in Reading, Pennsylvania. There I got to see a rare site:
This is "Fifi", the next to last B-29 Superfortress.
Now before I go any further, I want to point out that a good amount of non-history buffs might also know of "Fifi" here, believe it or not. If you happen to watch AMC's show "Better Call Saul", you saw this aircraft on the last season I think. Jimmy used it for one of his commercials while working at HHM:
While today's show had all sorts of WWII vehicles and aircraft, seeing the B-29 is always a treat. And not only do they exhibit the bomber, but they take it out on flights several times each day of the event! As I mentioned before, Fifi is the last 1 of 2 of it's kind, meaning there's only two flight-worthy examples of this model in the world. That's pretty crazy considering that Boeing made around 4,000 of these things.
It's also kind of crazy that there aren't more of these planes around due to their historical significance. The B-29 known as "Enola Gay" was the one that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Then again, that's a piece of the US history that many might like to forget about.
I digress. In short, I was thrilled to see Fifi in action again today. I was also glad to have our better camera with me to capture these images of her. The Commemorative Air Force, which owns many historical aircraft, rescued here from a navy training ground in the 1970's where she was being used as a missile target. We were so close to losing our B-29's for good, so kudos to the CAF for the rescue.
Length: 99 ft 0 in (30.18 m)
Wingspan: 141 ft 3 in (43.06 m)
Height: 27 ft 9 in (8.45 m)
Empty weight: 74,500 lb (33,800 kg)
Loaded weight: 120,000 lb (54,000 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 133,500 lb (60,560 kg) ; 135,000 lb plus combat load
Powerplant: 4 × Wright R-3350 -23 and 23A Duplex-Cyclone turbosupercharged radial engines, 2,200 hp (1,640 kW) each
Thanks for reading! These are all original photos from today's show, except for the screen grab from AMC's Better Call Saul.
Random, unrelated comment. Due to the market price of SBD, you can get more SP by choosing the 50/50 payout option, selling the Steem dollars on the internal market for STEEM, and then powering up that STEEM. It's a couple extra steps but you get more SP out of the deal and help to return the SBD market back to what it's supposed to be: pegged to 1 USD.
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Thank you @pfunk, sincerely. I really, really don't understand how cryptocurrency and/or steemit works. I've tried to learn and @kommienezuspadt has explained it to me several times, but it's still confusing. If you ever notice me doing something else that doesn't make sense or would be better a different way, please let me know. lol I thought NOT doing 100%SP would be un-steemit-patriotic or something. I didn't realize that SBD was so high though, so doing what you said completely makes sense. I appreciate the advice. 🙏
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It's ok to earn some money from Steem :)
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Hey @pfunk, I don't really know anyone else to ask about steemit inner working stuff. Someone just replied to my one post and the comment immediately got 16 upvotes. I've seen that happen a few times now. The upvoters seem to be legit accounts, but I mean it had all 16 the second it was posted. What's going on with that???
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Sometimes people set up bots to follow other people's votes. A service called Streemian supports this too. So one person may have commented, upvoted themselves, and then the accounts following them with bots voted too.
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Amazing. These planes are so rare in flying condition. And yeah, the B-29 was quite a leap in aircraft design. It was the first aircraft of the modern world.
I was watching an old episode of The Man From UNCLE the other day and they were using a real flying Lancaster in the filming of it. Wikipedia says only 17 of them still exist and just two are flying.
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Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate it. You totally nailed it about being the first aircraft of the modern world. I believe it was the first to have a pressurized cabin. Also, all of it's machine guns were computer/electronically aimed and fired. It really is mind-blowing that so few of these war machines are around. I mean 70 years isn't THAT long and, as I mentioned, they made so many of them during the war. I'll have to catch that episode. I think the outfit that owns Fifi here also have a Lancaster in their fleet. I was at the same even in 2015 and they had the only remaining flyable CS2C Helldiver that year. I'll have to put up some photos of it.
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Must be expensive to keep flying.
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