In 1940, Seattle-based Boeing engineers designed a massive beast of an aircraft. The B-29 Superfortress — composed of 55,000 parts — had a tail three-stories high, enormous propellers and a 5,500-mile range.
The aircraft, one of which is on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight, would play a key role in World War II as the U.S. Army Air Forces on the Pacific Front launched long-range strikes on industrial targets. Then, in March 1945, when those attacks failed to adequately slow the Japanese war machine, a commander shifted to incinerating crowded civilian neighborhoods with napalm-packed incendiaries.
James Scott chronicles this World War II aviation history in a compelling and ambitious new book "Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb."
