Some of those assembly lines were over a mile long.
Some of those assembly lines were over a mile long.
Here is some more info on the fire control system. Crazy advanced for that time:
In reply to aircooled:
Very cool. But I wish we would stop calling things like this "ahead of it's time."
It was it's time.
Lots of advanced things happened during the war- engineers got a lot of leeway in terms of development with a lot of money to support their research.
We think of WWII and radar, and remember the towers along the south coast of England, but few seem to remember that they advanced quickly (thank you, MIT) to the point that they were mounted in planes, which made some very effective night fighters.
Lots of control theory was laid out prior to computers- I've used some analog devices to control stuff that were not digital computers- so this stuff has been around a long time. And some have posted videos here of car production automation in the 30's.
I also have a paper from Alfa Romeo that told about EFI to support their MM project. Pre-war. It worked really well.
Engineers and scientists have always been smart people. Their thinking was not less than today just because they didn't have computers. They just didn't have computers, so computations took time. But all of the equations that are used have remained the same.
Yes, you are correct. Perhaps "more advanced them most people tend to think" is a better way to put it.
I find the B29 a bit of pushing the envelope though. Perhaps a bit much. Creating overly complex, hard to produce weapons is one of the things that got Germany into trouble (a Tiger tank is great, but 20 Shermans or T34's are more effective). Of course, the US had the plenty of production capability, but the reliability issue (which you will get with complex systems) did sting a bit when the B29 was put into service.
BTW the Me-109 was fuel injected and mass produced in late 30's! Later, to add power... NOS! Interestingly enough, one the prime issues with the early 3350's in the B29 was poor fuel distribution, caused by it being carbureted.
aircooled wrote: BTW the Me-109 was fuel injected and mass produced in late 30's! Later, to add power... NOS! Interestingly enough, one the prime issues with the early 3350's in the B29 was poor fuel distribution, caused by it being carbureted.
And it was installed upside down from what we are used to.
Not sure how the B29 got to the point of complexity that it did- but it did manage to do what the B17 was supposed to do but could not- fly without escort. Not 100%, but it was more super than just flying.
IMHO, the biggest question for the Sherman was one I read in a good book about Overlord- why it took so long to get a more powerful gun- and even the last one could not defeat a Tiger. All the while, we had a better gun. This is the theory of the book, and I will defer to 914 for his expertise.
One thing about the B29- it was the easy to trace father to the B52. Which has been in service since way before computers got to be a major thing in design and aeronautics.
Great stuff.
My brother was a B-29 mechanic. Went to school at Boeing. Ended up on Saipan.
He never would talk much about it.
Ended up at GE Flight Test after the war. Did all kinds of interesting stuff.
Asking him about the complexity of the plane and what issues they had maintaining them might be a good way to get him to open up a bit about his experiences.
The phrase we are looking for is "state or the art." The B-29 had it in spades
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