The YB in the foreground of the color shot may indeed have three blade propellers. When I visited with Easter Davis he said he believed that they delivered that airplane to Pratt (it was the first B-29 of any kind assigned to a training base) with three bladers and switched to the four blade type in the hangar soon after they got a second airplane to fly. The stuff he was assigned to weld was all collector ring and slip-joint cracks, along with fixing cracked motor mount parts. He said the early Dynafocal mounts were junk and that the engine bearers took a terrible beating on the very early airplanes. After getting the mounts ironed out and properly installed, that problem was lessened greatly.
Jesse C,
Most of the O.D. airplanes were assigned to the 58th Wing and those that weren't lost in combat were rotated home as war wearys when newer aircraft became available. The very early production Superforts, both painted and NMF, lacked a wing center-section tank that later aircraft had (I think 300 gallons or so), and these airplanes became trainers back in the CONUS. There were quite a number of these early airplanes that made it back home to be used as both flying and ground trainers.
Here's one of the trainers awaiting her fate at Pyote in '46:
And here is "Amarillo's Flying Solenoid". This was assigned to the B-29 Mechanic School and was likely a ground instructional airframe by the time this picture was taken.
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