Enola Gay Cockpit

Keith Lane

Keith Lane

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Keith Lane
Here's an interesting view of the office space of the B-29 Enola Gay.
Go to full screen, the button on the right end of the controls and pan around. Quite a busy place. It chills me to think how incredibly young these pilots were. And how few hours they had when handed over the keys to such a monster. Paul Tibbets had a bunch of time, but the average line pilot only had a few hundred hours total time.

http://www.davidpalermo.com/data/slideshow/4/enolagay/index.html
 
bbchien said:
You need a good FE.
Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth!
I tried to zoom in on the FE's station. More gauges than the flight deck guys had for sure. Can anyone tell me just what the FE did? Mixture/Prop setting? Monitor fuel and oil consumption?
 
Keith Lane said:
Ain't that the truth!
I tried to zoom in on the FE's station. More gauges than the flight deck guys had for sure. Can anyone tell me just what the FE did? Mixture/Prop setting? Monitor fuel and oil consumption?
Click to expand...

Pretty much the FE is/was the aircraft systems expert. I won't even try to compare what I do now to what those guys did then, but I'm pretty sure the duties have remained essentially the same. W+B calculations, performance, systems management(i.e. fuel balance and usage, electrics monitoring, pressurization, hydraulics, and any other aircraft specific systems), pre flight inspections, routine and non routine maintenance, as well as being another integral part of the flight deck crew in regards to CRM. As far as the additional controls in the B-29 and other large prop aircraft of the day like the Lockheed C-121 Connies I know the FE was also responsible for syncing the props.

I would have loved to have had the opportunity to crew one of these older airplanes, but I sure do enjoy some of the automation of today that makes my life easier.
 
Keith Lane said:
Ain't that the truth!
I tried to zoom in on the FE's station. More gauges than the flight deck guys had for sure. Can anyone tell me just what the FE did? Mixture/Prop setting? Monitor fuel and oil consumption?
Click to expand...
In the big piston birds, they did near everything BUT flight controls. This aircraft has two stage geared turbosuperchargers; going through 14 thousand or so they'd have to throttle back, change gears and re-establish MP; as the flying pilot has no controls of the type he has to "callout" what he wants.....

Detecting temp troubles, overspeed, etc that was all on the FE. Mixtures/props- all done by the FE on command for "climb power", "cruise power", "descent power", etc etc.
 
Keith Lane said:
Ain't that the truth!
I tried to zoom in on the FE's station. More gauges than the flight deck guys had for sure. Can anyone tell me just what the FE did? Mixture/Prop setting? Monitor fuel and oil consumption?
Click to expand...

FE had the engines... including the throttles. Props were electric controlled with toggle switches.
 
Keith Lane said:
It chills me to think how incredibly young these pilots were.
Click to expand...

A good friend of mine spent the summer of 1940 flying up to five missions a day in Spits in the Battle of Britain. He was shot down three times that summer. He was nineteen years old.
 
snowbird said:
A good friend of mine spent the summer of 1940 flying up to five missions a day in Spits in the Battle of Britain. He was shot down three times that summer. He was nineteen years old.
Click to expand...
If you have not yet read "The Few", I highly recommend it. It is also available as an audio book.
It's the story of the American pilots who broke US neutrality laws to fly for the RAF in 40.

http://www.thefewbook.com/home.html
 
AWACSEng said:
As far as the additional controls in the B-29 and other large prop aircraft of the day like the Lockheed C-121 Connies I know the FE was also responsible for syncing the props. .
Click to expand...

As well as running sweeps, setting power, managing fuel load and burn rates, controlling aircraft cabin temps, paralleling generators, and anything else he was told to do.

our preflight took 4 hours.
 
dmccormack said:
Neat find!

Tibbets was a B-29 test pilot.

Isn't it interesting that the turn and slip indicator is front and center on the jumbled panel?
Click to expand...
Paul Tibbits lead the first 8th Air force B-17 bombing mission in Europe . After completing his tour in B-17's Hap sent him to Wichata to iron out the B29 Program. He created the B29 training program. The Fuselage that became the Enola Gay was selected on the factory floor by Paul. Paul began with the first bombing raid on Germany and ended with the war ending raid on Japan.
 
Tom-D said:
As well as running sweeps, setting power, managing fuel load and burn rates, controlling aircraft cabin temps, paralleling generators, and anything else he was told to do.

our preflight took 4 hours.
Click to expand...

I included those duties in the first part of my post. Like I said, technology has changed but the root tasks are still there.
 
Great find...

Check out the heating system ducts overhead... follow them to their vents.

I couldn't find an airspeed indicator... wanted to see what the max indicated airspeed could have been.
 
Keith Lane said:
Paul Tibbets had a bunch of time, but the average line pilot only had a few hundred hours total time.
Click to expand...

Which seems very low, but when it was focused around training for the exact flying they were doing, that definitely made a difference. I've been reading "Hell Hawks!", about the P-47 pilots, and in there they say the average number was about 400 hours for the P-47s. Figuring similar for the bombers that time is still low, but when it's hard core training the whole time, it makes a bit more sense.

The book goes on to say that the two things that really helped the air battle against the Germans were the more highly skilled pilots (German pilots were apparently ~150 hours out of school), and the fact that Americans could produce airplanes substantially faster than the Germans could.

The more I learn about World War II history, the more it fascinates me.
 
So how did they control the nose wheel during steering? With all the throttles on the left of the pilot's seat I did not see a typical tiller. Did the B29 use the rudders to steer while on the ground?
 
IIRC, the B-29 has a free-castering nose wheel. All differential braking I guess.
 
AWACSEng said:
IIRC, the B-29 has a free-castering nose wheel. All differential braking I guess.
Click to expand...

True. The B-29 did have a free castering nosewheel. I worked at Lockheed -Georgia for 5 years, and since Bell Aircraft manufactured the B-29 there, there is a lot of historical info/pictures there.
 
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