The sight and sound of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress as it taxied off the runway in Little Rock took Charles Hinkle back 60 years - to the North Pole, of all places.
Saturday morning marked the first time the 81-year-old Maumelle resident had seenone of America’s first heavy bombers in person since he served as a crew member on one as a young airman during the Korean War era, making regular flights over the top of the world.
The aircraft taxied with just two of its four big radial engines turning their propellers, but it still produced adistinctive sound rarely heard anymore. It had just completed the first of two daily flights for paying passengers who wanted the opportunity to go back in time to when the nation produced almost 4,000 B-29s, one of the largest aircraft to serve the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.
The bomber, which first flew in 1942, is 90 feet long and has a 141-foot wingspan. It carried a crew of 11 and was armed with a dozen .50-caliber machine guns.
It could carry a heavier payload (20,000 pounds) higher, farther and faster than any previous bomber. Its service ceiling was 33,500 feet. Ithad a range of 3,250 miles and a top speed of 357 mph. The bomber allowed America to take the war to the Japanese mainland, and it was the aircraft that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that persuaded Japan to surrender.
The aircraft is operated and maintained by the Commemorative Air Force, an allvolunteer, nonprofit organization whose aim is to acquire, restore and preserve in flying condition a collection of the nation’s combat aircraft for the “education and enjoyment of present and future generations of Americans,” according to its website.
Hinkle watched as the only airworthy B-29 in the world, nicknamed Fifi, rolled to a stop. And he listened.
“Gosh, yes, it’s a wonderful sound,” Hinkle said as he stood outside a fence in front of Central Flying Service, a general aviation facility on the west side of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field in Little Rock.
Central Flying Service played host to Fifi on Saturday and today for tours and flights. People with fatter wallets and loftier ambitions also could take a spin in one of the fastest Allied fighters of World War II, a North American P-51 Mustang.
Fred Nielsen of Little Rock took a turn in the Mustang, which he learned about as a boy watching World War II newsreels that showed wingcamera footage of the P-51s making strafing runs against German targets.
“It’s always been my favorite aircraft,” Nielsen said. “I said [to myself], ‘I’m not getting any younger. I’m 74. This is my chance.’”
Gene Minor, 88, also of Little Rock, watched the Mustang pull in to drop off Nielsen. The aircraft served as escort fighters for the B-24 Liberators that he flew in World War II. He was aball-turret gunner, flying missions based in Italy. The Mustangs that escorted Minor’s bomber were the famed “Red Tails” belonging to the Tuskegee airmen, the first black aviators to serve in the American armed forces.
“They were the prettiest planes ever made,” Minor said. “They really saved our ass in Europe because of their range. [The Mustang] was a hell of a fighter.”
Hinkle wasn’t sure he could afford to go up for a flight in Fifi, but he was definitely going to tour the inside of the aircraft that was so like the one wherehe spent parts of two years while stationed in Alaska in 1951 and 1952.
Hinkle was assigned to a B-29 squadron as a “scanner,” a member of the crew who sat at a sighting glass window, or “blister,” in the fuselage behind the bomb bay and the wing. From that vantage point on each side of the fuselage, scanners could monitor the engines for fuel and oil leaks, confirm flap positions and verify whether the landing gear was positioned properly.
“Jokingly, they called us expensive flap and landinggear indicators,” Hinkle recalled with a smile.
And, yes, Hinkle said, Fifi’s six-member crew still counts scanners among the crew positions.
In Alaska, B-29s flew weather missions over the Arctic, ejecting instruments that were used to record weather data. Hinkle didn’t recall how many missions he flew in the B-29, but he distinctly remembered one to the North Pole and backthat lasted 21 hours.
“We were able to do that with additional fuel tanks in the bomb bay,” he said.
Another mission his aircraft regularly flew was radar-calibration flights for the Cold War-era DEW Line, or distant early warning line, a string of radar sites set up in the Arctic areas of Canada and other remote locations to detect incoming Soviet bombers. His B-29 wouldfly at assigned altitudes and headings to verify the accuracy of the radar. The flights allowed pilots of Air Force fighters, such as the F-89 Scorpion, to practice intercepting bombers.
Fifi will be available for flights and tours today at Central Flying Service. It is scheduled to fly Monday to Drake Field in Fayetteville and remain there through Wednesday.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 09/23/2012