WINGSPAN 140 FEET LENGTH 98 FEET THE BOEING B-29 _SUPERFORTRESS_ IS THE WORLD’S FASTEST AND LARGEST BOMBER. POWER FOUR 18-CYLINDER 2,200-HP. RADIAL ENGINES THE GIANT AIR-COOLED WRIGHT _CYCLONE_ ENGINES WHIRL GREAT, FOUR-BLADED PROPELLERS WITH A DIAMETER OF 16FT. 6IN. SPEED ONE HOUR 300+ MILES THE POWERFUL ENGINES AND GREAT PROPELLERS PULL THE HUGE B-29 THROUGH THE AIR AT A SPEED GREATER THAN THAT ATTAINED BY FIGHTERS AT THE START OF WORLD WAR II. RANGE 3,000+ MILES CEILING 40,000+ FEET ITS LONG, STREAMLINED FUSELAGE HOUSES PRESSURIZED COMPARTMENTS THAT ALLOW THE _SUPERFORTRESS_ TO FLY AT ALTITUDES OF MORE THAN 40,000 FEET WITHOUT THE USE OF OXYGEN BY THE CREW MEMBERS. PAYLOAD ELEVEN-MAN CREW SEVEN TONS OF BOMBS FOURTEEN .50-CAL. GUNS ONE 20-MM. CANNON REMOTE GUN CONTROL GIVE THE B-29 MORE ACCURATE DEFENSIVE FIREPOWER AND ITS GREAT LOAD-CARRYING ABILITY MAKES THE _SUPERFORTRESS_ THE MOST FORMIDABLE BOMBER NOW IN ACTION. THE B-29 REPRESENTS MORE THAN TEN YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN DEVELOPING LONG-RANGE, HEAVY-LOAD-CARRYING AIRPLANES BY THE BOEING COMPANY. THE SUCCESS OF THE B-17, THE _CLIPPER_, AND THE _STRATOLINER_ DEMONSTRATED THE POSSIBILITIES OF A HIGHLY STREAMLINED, FAST HIGH-ALTITUDE SUPER-BOMBER LIKE THE B-29.] [Illustration] Half again as large as the _Flying Fortress_, the _Superfortress_ carries twice the load of the _Fortress_. It has a wingspan of 141 feet and its highly streamlined fuselage is 98 feet long. Powered with the largest engines yet in service, it has a speed far in excess of 300 miles per hour. The pressurized cabin of the B-29 permits its crew to fly without the use of heated suits or oxygen masks at substratosphere altitudes. In military terms this means better physical condition, more skilful gunnery, more accurate bombing, and more comfort for the crews. In the _Superfortress_ we see great ideas, born years ago in the minds of our airmen, come into being with overwhelming and disastrous effects on our enemies throughout the Pacific. [Illustration: VOUGHT F4U _CORSAIR_ NAVY FIGHTER] NAVAL AVIATION IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF WORLD WAR II Just as the United States was approaching the brink of war, the Navy air arm owned only about a thousand airplanes of all types. The young Navy airmen who had perfected dive-bombing had seen their invention adopted by the Nazis and used with deadly effect in their march across Western Europe. In the year before Pearl Harbor the Navy had acquired only a few hundred new airplanes. We did have, however, a group of young men who had been living and breathing aviation for the past fifteen years. They knew what was needed in the way of new fighting planes and they knew how to train thousands of new naval aviators when the time came. But it took the tremendous sweeps of the Nazis in Europe and the shadow of Japan across the Pacific to unloose the flood of fighting planes which was to give the United States Navy the greatest aërial fighting force ever launched.