Comments by "Gort" (@gort8203) on "The Boeing B-54; Ultimate Superfortress" video.

@Aqua Fyre They were not "too scared to fly low", they were flying the mission under existing doctrine that the B-29 had in fact been designed for, which was high altitude daylight precision bombing. That profile had nothing to do with being scared, as the British could attest to because they were "too scared" to operate that way themselves, and advised the 8th Air Force to also bomb in the dark because it was safer. Lemay did not show the B-29 crews "how it was done", Lemay threw away existing USAAF doctrine on how it was done and created a new way of doing it. The new way was driven by analysis of the targets and the atmospheric conditions extant over them.
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@duncanhamilton5841 Yes, that is one of the atmospheric conditions that weighed against high altitude precision bombing. Lemay was not afraid to abandon established doctrine that was not producing results, and took the difficult decision to switch to the low altitude night area bombing that was so effective against Japan. He also had free thinkers like Robert S McNamara on his staff.
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@martingenerous1678 It not up to Boeing to cancel it. The Air Force placed contracts for it, and it's up to them to cancel it when they no longer want it. I suspect they kept working on it until they knew the jet designs were going to pan out soon. If they had canceled the B-54 and then the next gen didn't work out, all the internet armchair procurement officials here would instead be blaming them for cancelling one system before its replacement was ready, putting our country at risk and risking our brave troops by not giving them the best equipment available.
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Simply because the air force might buy it. They didn't have the benefit of the hindsight that is inhibiting your imagination and would happily build any airplane the air force would order. Luckily for the taxpayer USAF decided this airplane was not needed along with the B-36 and the jets soon to follow.
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It was an upgrade on their own aircraft and its competition wasn't their own aircraft, it was the Convair B-36.
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@martingenerous1678 You can say that, and if so then the B-54 would have also been obsolete when it went into production. That why it was cancelled. None of this is counter to my view that the competition for the B-54 was the B-36 rather than existing Boeing models. Neither of them was competition for the jets bomber that were soon to follow.
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It was not "only politics". The Lancaster was a back-up plan, but the B-29 had superior range and performance, and it was a given that it would drop the bomb unless the silverplate version was not ready.
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@geordiedog1749 If the B-29 hadn't been ready they would have used the Lancaster backup plan. But it was only a backup plan in case the B-29 wasn't ready, not the more sensible thing to do. The Lancaster did not have the range of the B-29 and couldn't even fly that mission round trip from Tinian and would have had to stage from a closer base. Your statement that the "US brass" wanted it to be a US-only show seems to imply that was unreasonable or some sort of character flaw. Despite giving the UK and Russia billions in equipment and supplies over the course of the war, the US also invested 2 billion in the the A-bomb and another 2 billion or so in the B-29. It was It was perfectly natural to assign the job to the B-29, which was ready in time and was the superior airplane for the mission. Trying to characterize this as some sort of mistake or inequity is absolutely ridiculous. It was the entirely sensible thing to do.
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@geordiedog1749 I didn't intend any affront or appeal to patriotism, and I don't know how sentiment affected Martlet pilots, so let's try to stick to the facts under discussion here. Of course, the possibility that anti-Anglo sentiment could affected somebody's judgment is no more ridiculous in principle than the possibility that anti-American sentiment could do the same, or is now affecting the very narrative you seem to be invested in here. But what I actually said is ridiculous is any attempt to characterize selection of the B-29 to drop the A-bomb as a mistake or inequity. If you think that decision was "only politics" you need to reexamine the technical, operational, and organizational factors you are overlooking. Revisionist history is fine when it corrects factual errors, but not when it is driven by sentiment to reinterpret events in creation of a narrative that supports that sentiment.
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