The drawing to the right is a detail from a figure from my book, showing the harried flight engineer of a B-29 bomber. Click for the full image, which is the cover of an instruction book for using the “flight engineer’s computer.”1
The “computer” is the slide rule that the flight engineer is holding. It was designed by physicist Alex Green (1919–2014) of the Twentieth Air Force’s Operations Analysis Section to aid in the management of fuel consumption over the course of long flights (see a picture of the slide rule here).2
In the drawing, the cause of the flight engineer’s stress is the complexity of the slide rule. Some years ago, Green replied to an inquiry I emailed to him concerning the illustration: “I instructed the artist of our topographical unit to show the flight engineer as the most hardworking member of the flight crew and to recognize that what we wanted him to do was impossible unless we gave him some extra arms. The flight engineers computer might have been the most complex slide rule in history with some six independent variables needed for a calculation of the fuel consumptions rate.”
One should also note that using such a slide rule was a task that came atop the flight engineer’s other, decidedly non-trivial duties. YouTube has increasingly become a treasure-trove of materials that would not previously have been readily available. Among materials that have recently appeared is the following training film for B-29 flight engineers, which nicely illustrates their typical responsibilities. An additional historical curiosity: one of the narrators is Ronald Reagan!
- Operations Analysis Section, Headquarters Twentieth Air Force, “Monthly Report for the Period 1 August to 4 September 1945,” Box 38, Papers of Curtis E. LeMay, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. ↩
- See Alex E. S. Green, “A Physicist with the Air Force in World War II,” Physics Today (August 2001): 40–44. ↩
My uncle was a Flight Engineer on a B-29 stationed at Isley Field in Saipan in 1944.
I had previously viewed the training film and had wondered about the slide rule. I also wondered when my uncle would have had time to use it. I would be interested to see how the fuel consumption computer was used. I never got to meet my uncle as he went down off the coast of Saipan in 1945 at the age of 25. I would have liked talking with him. I’m proud he was my uncle and of what he did for his crew and country.
Thank You
Hello,
My father M/Sgt Robert D. Pounds was also a Flight Engineer (FE) with the 330th BG 458th BS on the B-29 Spanish Fork, UT aka Heavenly Body K-35 sn:44-69997 A/C Huff for three years before leaving Guam and joining the AAF. Later, he joined the Air Force for the next 28 years. He retired from SAC AF in Ga and passed on in 1995 at the age of 72 years old. I often wondered what it was like to be in that “HOT” seat.
Later,
John Pounds son of (Ret) Maj. Robert D. Pounds Air Force 330th BG 458th BS
Ian and John, thanks very much for sharing. It’s always satisfying to connect up history to the real people who lived it; it makes it seem a little less academic and gives me a better sense of its personal significance.
-Will
My father was also a B-29 flight engineer with the 20th Air Force in WWII. He wrote his war-time memoirs a few years ago, which I edited. I was proud that his writing skills improved as he wrote the memoirs. He died in 2008.
Jay
Jay, I would like to read your father’s memoirs. Are they are able to emailed? My Dad was a flight engineer of a B-29 is ww2 and this experience what allowed him to become an officer in 1947.
My father was also a B-29 flight enigineer with the 330th Bomb Group 458th Bomb Squad with the 20th Air Force in WWII. He spent almost 30 years with the Air Force. He passed on in 1995.
Rick