Milestones: 'Fifi' and 'Doc' soar together

Between 1943 and 1946, 3,970 long-range Boeing B–29 bombers were made. When it entered production, the Superfortress was the largest aircraft in the world. A soldier in the Pacific Theater in 1945 would have gazed skyward as the rumble of these four-engine bombers announced Japan’s surrender to the Allies in a flyover of hundreds of military aircraft. The roar of so many Wright Double Cyclone engines must have been a sound like no other. And a sound seldom heard again.

On July 25 in the skies over Oshkosh, two B–29s flew in formation for the first time in more than 50 years. The historic meeting of these two “aviation unicorns,” as one visitor described them, was both uplifting and emotional for many—from the hard-working restorers and volunteers to the remaining veterans who served on B–29s in World War II and the Korean War. Fifi and Doc are the only two airworthy B–29s in the world. They joined in the air during EAA AirVenture—for their historic pairing on July 25, for part of a warbird extravaganza on July 26, and for a Missing Man formation on July 29.

“This is what it must have looked like in 1945,” said one observer of the warbird flight as the B–29s joined B–17s, B–24s, and other warbirds in the Oshkosh skies.

Fifi belongs to the Commemorative Air Force and was restored in the 1970s. Doc belongs to Doc’s Friends. Doc made its first flight July 17, 2016, after a 17-year restoration project in Wichita (see “‘Doc’s’ Friends,” February 2017 AOPA Pilot).

Other, nonflying B–29s are preserved at museums worldwide. Two of the 65 Silverplate B–29s, which were rigged for nuclear combat, survive: Enola Gay (nose number 82), the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb, is on display at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center; and Bockscar (nose number 77), which dropped “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, Japan, is at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Email [email protected]