The USA persistently turned down Soviet requests for the
delivery of B-29 bombers. Yet, despite this discrimination on the part of its
ally, by the beginning of 1945 the USSR had obtained three flyable
Superfortresses. Where had they come from? The origin of this miracle, very
timely for the USSR, is as follows.
From 1944 onwards the USAAF units equipped with the latest
B-29 bombers began to systematically raid territories occupied by Japan,
followed by bombing raids against the Japanese Islands themselves. In the
course of these raids several damaged aircraft made forced landings in the
Soviet Far East. It should be noted that during the first raids the B-29 crews
ran a fairly high risk of not returning to base. Apart from the danger posed by
the Japanese anti-aircraft defences, the fate of the crews depended on the
reliability of the aircraft’s systems – which left a lot to be desired in the
aircraft of the first production batches. Engine troubles were especially
numerous. The Wright R-3350 Twin Cyclones of early B-29As were extremely
unreliable and the service life was only 15 hours; there were frequent failures
of the defensive armament etc. This was the usual complement of ‘teething
troubles’ of a new and highly complicated machine which was hastily pressed
into combat service with all its vicissitudes. Besides, the first crews could
not use the aircraft to its full potential. This was especially true for
long-range flights. Not until 1945 did the Americans master the technique of
cruising at the aircraft’s service ceiling while heading for the target; this
technique substantially reduced fuel consumption, enabling the pilots to reach
the bomber’s design range.
The first Superfortress made a forced landing at the Soviet
Navy airbase Tsentral’naya- Ooglovaya, 30 km (18.6 miles) east of Vladivostok,
on 20th July 1944. The machine, a Wichita-built B-29-5-BW (USAAF serial
42-6256) christened Ramp Tramp because of its lengthy stays on the ground for
maintenance and piloted by Captain Howard R. Jarnell, belonged to the 770th
Bomb Squadron/ 462nd Bomb Group (Heavy). The aircraft was damaged while bombing
the Showa Steel Works at Anshan, Manchuria. Two of the bomber’s engines were
knocked out by antiaircraft fire and the pilot decided to play safe and land on
Soviet territory. Yakovlev Yak-9 fighters of the Pacific Fleet Air Arm
intercepted the aircraft and conducted it to the airfield in the vicinity of
Vladivostok where the crew and the aircraft were interned.
A month later, on 20th August 1944, another crippled
‘Superfort’, a Renton-built B-29A-1-BN of the 395th BS/40th BG(H) (42-93829
Cait Paomat II), crossed the Soviet border over the Amur River. The aircraft
had been damaged during a raid against steel foundries in Yawata, Japan. With
the radar inoperative, the B-29 lost its way in the clouds where it had taken
cover from Japanese fighters, straying into Soviet territory as a result. The
pilot, Major R. McGlinn, ordered the crew to bale out. The entire crew
parachuted to safety and the uncontrolled B-29 crashed into the foothills of
the Sikhote-Alin’ mountain range in the vicinity of Khabarovsk. Although the
bomber was a complete write-off, the wreckage was salvaged and delivered to
Moscow for close examination.
On 11th November 1944 B-29-15-BW 42-6365 piloted by Captain
Weston H. Price was hit by flak over the town of Omura, Japan. (Some sources,
though, claim it flew into a typhoon during a raid against the Japanese islands
and was severely damaged by a lightning strike.) The crew managed to limp to
the Soviet coast, landing at Tsentral’naya-Ooglovaya AB. This B-29 belonging to
the 794th BS/468th BG(H) was christened General H. H. Arnold Special to
commemorate a visit paid to this particular aircraft by General Henry ‘Hap’
Arnold; the same was witnessed by a memorial plate affixed in the aircraft’s
cockpit. It was this aircraft that was dismantled in Moscow and used for making
outlines of all parts and copying the dimensions for the purpose of issuing
working drawings for Tu-4 production. The memorial plate was removed and kept
as a souvenir by Leonid L. Kerber, a leading equipment specialist of the
Tupolev OKB; later he gave it to Maximilian B. Saukke who also took part in the
work on the Tu-4.
The fourth aircraft, B-29-15-BW 42-6358 Ding Hao! (794th
BS/468th BG(H)) piloted by Lieutenant William Micklish, fell into Soviet hands
ten days later. On 21st November 1944 it was hit by AA fire during a raid
against a target in Japan (some sources claim it was attacked by Japanese
fighters when bombing Omura). One of the engines was damaged and went dead. On
three engines the aircraft reached the Soviet coastline where it was met by
Soviet fighters; they escorted it to an airfield where the bomber made a safe
landing.
So far, Western publications say four Superfortresses were
lost in this fashion. Some sources, however, claim that much later, on 29th
August 1945, a fifth and final B-29 found its way into the USSR. Japan had
already ceased resistance but the Act of Capitulation was not yet signed, and
pilots of the Pacific Fleet’s fighter element were on combat alert, ready to
engage the enemy at a moment’s notice. The B-29 made its appearance over Kanko
airfield where the 11th lAP (istrebifel’nyy aviapolk – fighter regiment) of the
Pacific Fleet Air Arm was based. Two pairs of Yak-9s scrambled to intercept the
B-29. Hot-tempered naval pilots made a firing pass at the ‘American’, putting
one of its engines out of action. The machine made a forced landing at Kanko.
Now the first three B-29s that had made forced landings were
interned by the USSR on a perfectly legal basis, whatever Western authors may
say about it being ‘contrary to agreements with the United States’. In April
1941 a Pact of Neutrality was concluded between the USSR and Japan with a
five-year term of validity; in April 1945 the USSR denounced this Pact. While
this Pact was still valid, the Soviet Union abided strictly by its stipulations
and fulfilled its obligations over Japan, including the clauses providing for
the internment of Allied combat materiel and personnel in the Far Eastern
theatre of operations. In the course of virtually all four years of the Great
Patriotic War the Japanese threat hanging over the Soviet Union was something
to be reckoned with. Should Japan undertake an offensive in the East, this,
coupled with powerful German blows, at least in 1942-43, could place the USSR
on the brink of total disaster. Therefore the Soviets diligently complied with
all the clauses of the 1941 Pact, interning any and all American aircraft and
crews that landed in the Soviet Far East. The first to land in the Soviet Union
in 1942 was a B-25B from the famous group led by Lieutenant-Colonel James H.
Doolittle which attacked the Japanese islands on 18th April after taking-off
from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet with a ‘one-way ticket’. Then a
considerable number of B-25s, B-24s, Lockheed PV-1 Venturas and PV-2 Harpoons
made landings on Soviet territory. Some of them were in airworthy condition;
later they were taken on strength by the WS and even took part in combat
against Japan in 1945.
The three slightly damaged B-29s that had landed in the USSR
in 1944 were interned on the same legal basis. The fifth Superfortress,
however, which landed at Kanko in August 1945 was handed over to the Americans
together with its crew, since the stipulations of the Soviet-Japanese Pact were
no longer enforced. All the interned crews of Allied aircraft were sent to a
special NKVD (Soviet secret police) camp near Tashkent. Before being sent there
they were allowed a meeting with the US consul who promised to send a message
to the USA informing their relatives that they were alive. When the airmen
asked when they would be set free, the consul could only answer- that they were
interned in conformity with the Geneva Convention and that they would have to
wait. The camp was subjected to observation by Japanese officials and the
Soviet administration had to be extra careful.
As for the interned aircraft, they should have been returned
to the USA once the Soviet- Japanese Pact was denounced, but the Americans did
not bother much about this problem. Their reasoning was quite logical: three
flyable B-29 would not be a decisive factor; they would not dramatically raise
the power of the Soviet Air Force. As for the Russian aircraft industry copying
the latest American technology and, in consequence, putting these machines into
series production, they simply did not believe in such a possibility. Even when
the first three production examples of the Tu-4 – a copy and analogue of the
American B-29 – flew over Moscow’s Tushino airfield, for a long time people in
the USA remained under the impression that the machines seen at Tushino were
the very B-29s interned by the Russians in 1944. Thus, by the beginning of 1945
the USSR had at its disposal three virtually operational B-29s.
The machines were in the charge of the Pacific Fleet Air
Arm. People’s Commissar of the Navy Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsov issued an
order calling for a careful examination of the American machines. Vice-Chief of
Flight Inspection of the Naval Air Arm Colonel S. B. Reidel was sent on a
mission to the Far East. Reidel had prior experience of testing and developing
aviation materiel of the Naval Aviation, he spoke English and, by virtue of his
professional skills, was exactly the right person to tackle the task of
breathing new life into the American machines. To assist him, Major Vyacheslav
P. Maroonov and one more pilot were sent from the Black Sea Fleet, as both of
them had some experience with American aircraft. Engineers A. F. Chernov and M.
M. Krooglov were seconded by the Pacific Fleet Air Arm. (Subsequently both
Maroonov and Chernov were employed by the Tupolev OKB, flight-testing a number
of aircraft, including the Tu-4. Both of them were involved in the crash of the
first prototype of the Tu-95 turboprop-powered strategic bomber (Tu-95/1) on 11th
May 1953; co-pilot Maroonov parachuted to safety while flight engineer Chernov
was killed in the crash.)
Reidel mastered the B-29 on his own, making use of his
knowledge of English and the flight and maintenance manuals discovered in one
of the aircraft (subsequently these documents were transferred to the Tupolev
OKB and were used by the OKB personnel when working on the Tu-4; several books
from this set of documents are now preserved in the archives of the museum of
the present-day Tupolev Joint-Stock Company. Reidel performed several taxying
runs on the airfield, followed by brief hops and, finally, by the first real
flight. From January 1945 onwards the B-29 became the object of systematic
study. As of 1st January, two B-29s were in the charge of the Pacific Fleet Air
Arm command and one more was operated by the 35th Independent Long-Range 80mber
Squadron. This air unit was formed specially for testing the B-29; eventually
it came to comprise two B-29s and one B-25. Flights were performed from
Romanovka airbase which was best suited for flights of heavy aircraft in the
class of the B-29. One of the machines was flown by Reidel, while Maroonov and
Chernov mastered the other one. They were given two days to get acquainted with
the machine. Their English being far from perfect, they spent these two days
mainly crawling all over the bomber, armed with a thick English-Russian
dictionary. On the third day Reidel made them sit and pass an exam. On 9th
January Maroonov flew as co-pilot in the right-hand seat, the left-hand seat
being occupied by Reidel. Two days later Maroonov performed a flight on his
own, piloting ‘the American’ from the captain’s seat.
Flight-testing of the B-29s in the Far East went on until 21st
July. In the course of these tests the bomber’s basic performance
characteristics were recorded, proving to be somewhat inferior to figures
obtained from the USA. This is natural: the machines were not new, having seen
a good deal of wear and tear. Several high-altitude flights were undertaken to
check the maximum range in a circuit and to perform bombing.
In June and July two B-29s were ferried to Moscow. The first
machine was piloted by Reidel, with Major Morzhakov as co-pilot and Krooglov as
flight engineer. The names of the airmen piloting the second machine are
unknown; however, it is certain that Maroonov was not one of them. By then he
had already been transferred to one of the regiments converted to the Tu-2;
shortly thereafter he took part in the fighting against Japan. Sometime later
the third B-29 was also ferried to Moscow. The B-29s arrived at Izma’ilovo
airfield on the outskirts of Moscow where they joined the 65th Special Mission
Air Regiment. At the request of Air Marshal Aleksandr Yeo Golovanov, Commander
of the 18th Air Army, one of the B-29s (42-6256) was transferred to the 890th
Air Regiment based at 8albasovo airfield near the town of Orsha. Apart from
nine Soviet-built Pe-8s, the regiment operated twelve restored ex-USAAF B-17s
and nineteen B-25s (the latter were supplied under the Lend-Lease agreement);
this was a result of the scarcity of flyable bombers forcing the Soviet Air
Force to repair every available aircraft. The Superfortress remained with the
890th Air Regiment until May 1945. As soon as discussions concerning the
possibility of copying the B-29 began at the highest level, the machine was
ferried to Moscow by the famous test pilot Mark L. Gallai who took the first
Tu-4s into the air two years later.
In the early summer of 1945 A. N. Tupolev and Aleksandr A.
Arkhangel’skiy (one of his aides) were summoned to Stalin. They surmised that
the conversation would be concerned with the work on the ’64’ aircraft, so they
brought along an album with a graphic presentation of this machine in colour
(the artwork of B. M. Kondorskiy). However, almost right from the start Stalin
began discussing the B-29, and the conversation ended with Stalin’s
instructions to Tupolev requiring him to copy the B-29 within the shortest
possible time frame. Shortly thereafter an appropriate directive of the State
Defence Committee and a suitable order of the NKAP were issued. The ball was
set in motion.
