B-29 Deployments to the Marianas - and the limits of AI

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C

Conslaw

Senior Airman
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Jan 22, 2009
Indianapolis, Indiana USA
I was curious about the routes that B-29s took from the United States to bases in the Marianas and from the CBI theater to the Marinas, so I asked Google Gemini and ChatGPT. Both were clearly guessing in the answer they gave, but couched it in factual language. For example both sites referenced in air refueling, and anyone who frequents this board knows that in air refueling was not a thing before the end of the war. Chat GPT suggested the planes refueled at Leyte starting in October 1944. Then it guessed the stopover was Clark Field on Luzon, maybe eventually, but the US did not land on Luzon until Jan 1945,

Do any of you have actual factual information about how the planes were ferried to the Marianas both from the United States and the CBI theater?
 
It was the Central Pacific Air Route used by the B-29s to deploy to the Marianas (first B-29 reached Saipan on 12 Oct 1944) and later Okinawa (starting August 1945)

So the route ran from the USA (departure point being bases near San Francisco) to Hawaii to Johnston Island Johnston Island Air Force Base - Wikipedia

To Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands (captured from the Japanese 31 Jan to 4 Feb 1944) where there were several airfields

Pacific Wrecks - Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands

Kwajalein Atoll is located in the Marshall Islands. Known to Americans forces as simply Kwaj.
pacificwrecks.com

and on to the Marianas starting with Saipan but then expanding to Guam & Tinian as XXI Bomber Command expanded from one to five Bomb Wings in 1944/45 and eventually on to Okinawa where the 8th AF received its first B-29s on 8th August 1945.

The initial deployment of the B-29s of the 58th BW, XX Bomber Command to India was via the Atlantic, North Africa, Arabia and Iran and then across India itself. I've never found details of its routing in March-May 1945 March-May 1945 when it redeployed from its bases in Eastern Bengal near Calcutta in India to West Field, Tinian in the Marianas, but it must have included The Philippines for the aircraft. The ground echelon would have gone by sea via Australia, probably via Fremantle and Sydney rather than via Darwin. AFAICT it was the end of May and into June before routes via Darwin to New Guinea and the Philippines began to open up. It was around that time that the Japanese began reducing their garrisons on the islands in the DEI to the north of Darwin.
 
Thanks for the info. I was mostly curious about the B-39 units in China, as there seemed to be no good way to get them to the Marianas, at least until b-29-capable airfields were available in the Philippines.
 
Conslaw said:
Thanks for the info. I was mostly curious about the B-39 units in China, as there seemed to be no good way to get them to the Marianas, at least until b-29-capable airfields were available in the Philippines.
Click to expand...
A bit more Googling found this about the movements of the 462nd BG in WW2 for both the air and ground echelons. The document has a crude map which shows the ground echelon going from India to Tinian around the South of Australia while the aircraft flew direct from India to Tinian. The map itself is well into the document.

The distance for that flight was about 3,800 miles.

I hadn't previously thought about it but the figure I have for the FERRY range of the B-29 is 5,600 miles and could be extended to 6,000 miles with additional bomb bay tanks. So the distance was well within the capabilities of the B-29.
 
I found the most interesting thing in the book is how the crew had to fly, study, and fine tune their airplane to get it performing properly. It was not like climbing in a brand new car and hitting the road, but more like what you might find in team supporting a racing car or competition airplane. They had to find out how to operate it and what the airplane liked in terms of adjustments.
 
This reminds me of the efforts Jimmy Doolittle made in trying to get the bugs sorted on his B-25s prior to the Tokyo raid. Even after giving strict instructions to the personnel at McClellan Field he found that they often ignored his orders and did what they'd always done. My recollection is that at least one aircraft and crew was lost after discovering that their fuel economy was not what it should have been.
 
Sabrejet said:
My recollection is that at least one aircraft and crew was lost after discovering that their fuel economy was not what it should have been.
Click to expand...
When the B-29 Enola Gay came off the production line it was sent to Midwest Air Depot, Midwest City OK. They normally checked calibration on the fuel flowmeters by removing them and putting them on a test bench. On that airplane they were told that they WOULD calibrate the flowmeters IN THE AIRPLANE, in order to improve accuracy. They did not know why those 509th BG airplanes had to receive that kind of special treatment but they figured it out later.
 
Somewhere I have an article from the USAF Museum newsletter, describing one crew's experiences. Their B-29 had a fuselage with the front and rear sections built by two different companies, Bell and Martin. The Bell rear fuselage was a bit larger in diameter than the Martin built front fuselage and to get them to fit they had to crimp down the rear fuselage onto the front half. Sounds horrible, and must have looked rather odd, but for some reason that particular B-29 was the fastest one in the unit.

And in the book Friendly Monster they explain "their" B-29 had two crews. They kept the airplane flying even when the crew was resting. This was not unusual, I guess. That is how my friend Bob's PB4Y-2 ran out of gas on the way back to Iwo. The crew that had used their airplane had gassed it up when they got back but did not wait for the fuel to settle and then gas it up again after all the air bubbles had escaped. So they had all four engines quit, at night, while on final to Iwo, just as the main airfield suffered a power failure and went dark.
 
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