I was just looking at some shots of the Enola Gay at the National Air & Space Museum. I noticed that the aircraft didnt have de-icers on the wings and tailplane. Is that correct ? I was all set to paint them on, over the NMF.
Perhaps when they restored her they didnt feel de-icer boots were neccesary… She’s not very high in the museum[angel]
Thanks Max, I thought the forum was a place where I could get some advice from fellow modellers. If you think I should get off my butt and do my own research- point taken[V]
Wirraway,
You’ll find that “Enola Gay” B-29-45-MO, serial number 44-86292, did not have de-icer boots installed in the leading edges of the wings or rudder.
The ‘Silverplate’ B-29s were built pretty much for the mission they were sent on. They were built for speed to avoid the bomb blast - no turrets, no armor plate, etc… However, lots of 29’s flew without deicer boots. Deicer boots are simply inflatable rubber bladders - they got shredded pretty quick in the field, and got removed.
You can pretty much take it to the bank that a Smithsonian restoration is as perfect as it gets - if it’s not on the Enola Gay at the Udvar-Hazy, its not supposed to be there.
Here’s a pic of the plane on the tarmac:
http://members6.clubphoto.com/_cgi-bin/members/compact_slide_show.pl?album_item_id=77947355
See? these nice people will correct a modeler when wrong. My question is, if the planes didn’t need de-icer boots, why put em on at the factory at all?
It might of been one of those, “you don’t really need them, but it’d be really, really, REALLY nice to have them.” Think of them like seatbelts- the factory is going to install them, but in wartime if the guys flying find that they get in the way (ie, prevent them from exiting a burning aircraft quickly or something), they’ll tear 'em off!
This, of course, is all speculation. Maybe they weren’t designed for the operating conditions? The Pacific Theater wasn’t too kind to aircraft.
Who knows? (I sure don’t! [:D] Not for sure, anyway!)
Gatormark is on the mark. The airplane was designed for, and plumbed for de-ice boots. It’s a big, instrument flight capable airplane, and boots are good thing to have when you’re in the clouds and making ice. However, as said before, they rip, get punctured easily, abrade easily and they require lots of maintenance. In the European theater, they found that the performance loss from battle damaged boots far outweighed the capability to shed ice, and they flew in icing a lot.
Both the 29 and the 17 will carry a good amount of ice before the wing will stall, so you stand a good chance of finding an altitude where it is not icing, or warm enough to shed the ice. In the Pacific, it was a little easier to avoid ice because the number of days when you had stratus clouds was far less, and the freezing level was often pretty high.
The question has been pretty well answered, but I did find a photo of the Enola Gay taking off from Wendover, Utah where training was done before the 509th went to Tinian, and no boots are installed. The radome is on the belly between the bomb bays, though. And of course the Enola Gay did not have turrets installed either.
The photo is in"The History of the United States Air Force" by David Anderton, 1981, page 128