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The sole XB-44 Superfortress was a B-29 Superfortress converted to test the possibility of using the R-4360 radial engine.. Development of an improved B-29 started in 1944, with the desire to replace the unreliable Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines with the more powerful four-row, 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines, America's largest-ever displacement aircraft ...
The Lucky Lady II was a B-50 of the 43rd Bombardment Group, equipped with 12 .50-caliber (12.7mm) machine guns. For its circumnavigation mission, a fuel tank was added in the bomb bay for extra range. The mission required a double crew with three pilots, under the command of Capt. James Gallagher. The crews rotated in shifts of four to six hours.
Trained for strategic bombardment missions during the postwar years, being upgraded to the new atomic bomb-capable Boeing B-50 Superfortress in 1948. Replaced the propeller-driven B-50s with new Boeing B-47E Stratojet swept-wing medium bombers in 1954, capable of flying at high subsonic speeds and primarily designed for penetrating the airspace ...
Lucky Lady II was a Boeing B-50 Superfortress of the 43rd Bombardment Group with an additional fuel tank added in the bomb bay to provide additional range. It became the first airplane to circumnavigate the globe nonstop, when it made the journey in 94 hours and one minute in 1949, assisted by refueling the plane in flight.
Although the combat box was initially designed around a group of airplanes, it was expanded to include a formation of three groups flying together as a "combat wing", all of which were based on the same triangular design of a leading bomber (or grouping of bombers) in the center, and two bombers (or groupings) immediately behind in a vee shape, with one at an altitude above and one below the ...
Luke the Spook was one of the fifteen Silverplate B-29s delivered to the 509th Composite Group for use in the atomic bomb operation and assigned to the 393d Bomb Squadron. Built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft plant at Omaha, Nebraska , it was accepted by the USAAF on June 15, 1945, after most of the 509th CG had already left Wendover Army Air ...
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The B-50 gave the unit the capability to carry heavy loads of conventional weapons faster and farther as well as being designed for atomic bomb missions if necessary. By 1951, the emergence of the Soviet MiG-15 interceptor in the skies of North Korea signaled the end of the propeller-driven B-50 as a first-line strategic bomber.