Saga of the Superfortress

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{detailed description}Best known as the aircraft that carried the atomic bomb to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the B-29 Superfortress emerged from World War II as a dramatic symbol of the force of American strategic air power. The most advanced bomber of its day, it was equipped with remote-controlled gun turrets, was the first to be pressurized for high-altitude operations, and could carry its eleven-man crew and thousands of pounds of bombs for more than five thousand miles at over four hundred miles per hour. It was a tremendous technological achievement; it was also the Army Air Force's biggest gamble.
Steve Birdsall, already familiar to military aviation buffs as the author of such books as Flying Buccaneers and Log of the Liberators, here tells the story of this awesome weapon, from its conception in the mind of General H. H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the Army Air Force, to the epochal delivery of "Little Boy," the first nuclear attack. Saga of the Superfortress is a comprehensive history of the plane, the men who designed and flew it, and the grueling, perilous missions they carried out: ferry flights over the Himalayan "Hump"; the fearsome incendiary raids when hundreds of the huge airplanes stoked raging fire storms in the hearts of the Japanese cities; and the August, 1945, mission in which a sole B-29, the Enola Gay, leveled Hiroshima and blasted the world into the atomic age.
More than 200 photographs, many never before published, complement the story, a story that ranges far across the vast reaches of the Pacific, whose cast of characters includes such greats as MacArthur, LeMay, Chennault and Nimitz. The Superfortresses and the pilots and crews of the Twentieth Air Force opened a new chapter in the history of war, a tale of courage and tenacity, tragedy and triumph. This is a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the machines, men and events that shaped the postwar world.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Steve Birdsall
Published by Sidgewick and Jackson 1981 (1st UK edition of 1980 USA 1st.) 346pp profusely illustrated, index, appendix, bibliography. 19x26
{condition}fine, including d/j.
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