Yesterday I did another interview about reuniting a B-29 Tail Gunner with the 150 "lost" letters he wrote home during the war, (see previous thread
http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=42310) and for the second part of the interview with NBC's "11Alive News" in Atlanta we visited Dobbins ARB in Marietta and the B-29 "Sweet Eloise" they have on display there. Unfortunately we were all running behind from the drive and the reporter had literally 10 minutes before he had to race back to the station and start putting the story together for the news that night, so we only got a few quick shots of me walking around the bird. Afterwards I stayed a little while longer and took some pictures myself, and thought I would post them since you don't often see too many pics of this B-29.
We weren't allowed to film or photo from any "angles" that would show the entrance to the base, or the buildings on the base located behind the B-29 for "security reasons," so apologies in advance as I couldn't take a lot of pictures that I wanted to. Special thanks to the 94th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office for working with us on short notice!
Link to the video and story from yesterday
http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=203671And on to the B-29!
Tailskid missing a few "critical" parts!
Missing rivets, quite a few were missing on the left rear fuselage
Bomb bay doors
This Bird's feet are firmly planted!
"Three down and welded!" (note the steel pipe welded to the strut)
The nose well...
Homemade ladder hanging from the chains securing the nose hatch
The nose hatch
Nose well looking fwd, the X brace they added to keep the gear doors open (some may notice something "funny" about those doors!)
Nose well looking aft
They also added bolts to hold the gear doors on and open (note the corrosion in the extrusion)
Bolts, and a repair from some point in time
Nose well looking fwd at the strut, trunnions etc
A look at the jackscrew that lowers and retracts the nose gear; electric motor on the right, on the left is a gear box for manually cranking the gear up or down from the cockpit if the motor fails
MLG well looking fwd
MLG well looking aft
MLG well looking fwd, you can see where the drag struts attach to the back side of the fwd spar, etc etc
A birdie nest in one of the gear doors
A -3350 marking it's territory
Some down right NASTY corrosion on the leading edge of the right flap!
Another bird nest
My ugly mug (I ruined my new shirt crawling up in the gear wells, ha!)
Aaaaand finally, the particulars of this B-29...she's got some history to her! Hopefully we can get her indoors one of these days!
Hope ya'll enjoyed!
~Trevor
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All in all, she appears to be in pretty good shape, the doubler in the nose well web to flange looks like a factory install so it may be a stiffener installed over a factory gap or a production mod to address an in service issue encountered in action.
