Aviation enthusiasts; The 2nd airworthy B-29 - "Doc" arrives at Oshkosh (pics and vids)

[A HERETIC I AM]

Doc, built in 1944, was one of 2,766 B-29s built at Boeing. This aircraft arrived in Wichita in 2000 in pieces on flatbed trucks, and volunteers spent more than a decade lovingly restoring the aircraft to flyable condition. It flew for the first time in July 2016.

(If the below photos won't show for you because a password is needed, more photos can be found at the www.b-29doc.com website)






More;

http://www.b-29doc.com/2017/07/24/doc-arrives-in-oshkosh-for-eaa-airventure-2017/

Some air-to-air footage;

Doc arrives. Includes footage of other warbirds arriving;

[Greybnk48]

1. This just flew right over our backyard in Appleton

in all it's glory about an hour or so ago! Really cool!

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. Neat!

Would have loved to see it

[Greybnk48]

3. Don't mean to be a jerk, but it just came over again 3 minutes ago!

What a sound it makes! Before your post we did not know what it was, so thank you! We were thrilled to see it too! It's coming back right now!!!!! Third pass over our yard. Wow!

[A HERETIC I AM]

6. LOL! You're not being a jerk!

I'm just a wee bit envious

[sdfernando]

4. I don't think this was its first flight /NT

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. It wasn't

She flew for the first time last year

[sdfernando]

10. She was restored....

that means she flew during WWII.

[A HERETIC I AM]

13. Indeed

If you visit their website, you can find out more history on Doc. The airframe sat on the ground in the desert north of LA County, at the China Lake Naval Weapons station for years.

[MiddleClass]

5. Great to see history in action

Thank you, I wonder how many were ever built, the B-17 was was the work horse.

B 29 was the height of technology

[EX500rider]

9. The B-29 production total was 3,970 aircraft.

[MiddleClass]

11. What company made them, I believe it was 3 companies

It's been years since I looked up all that info.

They were the first with pressurization.

There was a lot built, they could fly higher than the fighter jets.

I did not know they were exclusively Pacific theater.

[link:http://www.boldmethod.com/blog/lists/2015/03/facts-about-the-b-29-superfortress/|

[EX500rider]

12. Boeing, Martin and Bell were the 3.

[A HERETIC I AM]

15. As Ex500rider said, Martin and Bell were the other two builders, both under license from Boeing.

The plants were;
Boeing Seattle, Washington
Boeing Renton, Washington
Boeing Wichita, Kansas
Bell Aircraft Co. Atlanta (Marietta), Georgia
and
Glenn L. Martin Co. Omaha, Nebraska

Pics of the Wichita plant;







From here;
http://www.b29-superfortress.com/b29-superfortress-production-assembly-plants.htm

[GreenEyedLefty]

8. Doc is on Facebook too

https://www.facebook.com/DocsFriends/

[hunter]

14. The Wright brothers were flying this in 1904:

wikipedia

It's amazing progress that this B-29 was built forty years later.

Despite being a tool of war, it is a lovely plane and I totally understand and applaud the motivations of those volunteers who got it flying again. It's one of the reasons our family cars have salvage titles. So much as I hate automobiles (and war machines...) I get some satisfaction bringing dead machines back to life, feeling in my hands what the original designers and builders were about. Reading history isn't enough. Sometimes you must touch it.

I think this progress in aeronautics is why people thought we'd be crawling all over the solar system by now, having landed men on the moon.

But we have made a whole lot of progress in computers and telecommunications.

In 1977 I thought I was hot stuff writing FORTRAN for a mainframe computer far less powerful than any smart phone today.

It still amazes me that I can find in the e-waste bin what would have been the world's most powerful supercomputer of the 'seventies. Or I can buy a Raspberry Pi 3 computer rated at 460 MFLOPS for $35 in 2017 compared to the Cray I supercomputer rated 160MFLOPS which cost $8.8 million in 1977.



(A couple of people, amused by this comparison have built miniature Cray-1 models with a credit card sized Raspberry Pi inside.)

One thing that surprises me is how all this modern computing power has been put to use. I'm sure a lot of it has been devoted to military uses that are not common knowledge yet, just as some aspects of the B-29's design were not common knowledge when it was built. The most obvious and big money use for all this computer power is movie making.

I get frustrated with myself because I haven't used the computer power I've been blessed with to make any great advances in science. I liked to think of myself as some kind of mad scientist after I quit high school for college. (Truth was, I was mostly mad. We've got meds for that now.) I think some of my better "supercomputer" use is posting words on Democratic Underground, and occasionally I've done more practical things with this immense computing power, but I've not created any AI's or opened any portals into other universes...

[MiddleClass]

17. Just think of it, about 87 89. I fix computers for the group of 30 at my job, bank for stock excha

I remember reading, what was proposed, on the screen during lunch,

people able to get on their computer and buy stock through a portal provided by the brokerage company.

Pure automation, no more seat on the exchange, broker in the office, calling on the phone.

No more trade + 5 days for clearance, T + 3, the norm.

I must admit, I tripled my 401(k) withholding, and rode the nineties with a smile.

Now it can be done from a cell phone, computer technologies, has exploded.

I went back to school for software engineering (Java programming) and the AI was amazing.

Just imagine, with the Internet at your disposal, a program can be unlimited in possibilities

[krispos42]

16. Gorgeous. Look at the skin!

It looks brand-new!

[Docreed2003]

18. So amazing! Thanks for sharing!

[A HERETIC I AM]

19. Glad you liked it. n/t