There is one in a Museum; The Enola Gay is in the Smithsonian. I would love to see that one.
The turrets on a B29 are deadly! She was the only bomber to carry 20mm cannon in her turrets ( approx 80 calibre) so she had TEETH! They also had the first computer guided turrets in the air, so she had a better hit percentage than any other bomber. It was hard to attack her!
Even at that though, and the extreme altitude , they still managed to shoot down a number of our super fortresses!
:'(
sir smithlabs! the first computer guided turrets? I wonder how those worked, I mean how did they site them and see when to shoot I wonder.
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The gunners placed their sights on the plane to shoot at. the system measured speed and distance, and corrected for lead. The gunner controlled the burst length. The computer was analog, and the turrets were deadly....
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sir smithlabs..yeah but the turrets were not manned except the rear ones right? so how did they aim the other ones if it was remote control?
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None were manned, all were remote controlled. The gunners were close to the turret, and had an internal sight they directed through a window, the turrets were all machinery, which was good, because a Man could not have survived the noise of a 20mm is this tight space!
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oh ok sir smithlabs that makes alot more sense, thanks for the explanation!
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The computerized aiming was the Massive innovation! This was the first plane that assisted the gunner in aim point. That had never been tried before, now every plane uses some form of assistance on sighting! This was HUGE, a massive step forward!
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sir smithlabs...wouldn't it have been something to be able to be part of the engineering group that designed and built this thing, you would have fit right it my friend!
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It would have been fun, but I would have had a lot of old technology to learn first. I have built some tube type equipment, repaired a lot of it, and know how to design it, but never actually did much tube type design. I could help them a lot on the microwave stuff, and the waveguides!
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