Boeing B29 With Allison 3420 Engines ...

What if? Alternate history of the Boeing B29 bomber development. What if the experimental Allision twin V24 3420 heavy bomber engine had been fully worked up by 1940? Over 3,000 high altitude hp to start off with and increasing to almost 4,000 take off hp by the end of the war in the Pacific against Japan.

Instead of barely carrying 10,000 to Tokyo and back with initial engine life of 15 hours with the Wright 3350 air cooled engine, instead with the Allision things started off carrying 20,000 pounds to the North Islands, then progressed from there carrying 30,000 pounds of General LaMays (sp?) incendiary bomb campaign?

The big unanswered question is would have such a design change resulted in such improved B29 flight performance and would have that made any big difference in the war against Japan? Enough of a considered difference that the use of the A BOMB was considered not necessary as Japan surrendered months earlier?

And ... never start a paragraph with a conjunction. No .... wait. And if the A BOMB had NOT BEEN USED against Japan because they surrender somewhat earlier what kind of difference would THAT have made in a post World War Two environment? How would have the Cold War played out? Just some questions.
 
If that engine comes online that much earlier you potentially get a lot more B29s in Europe even earlier. It also means a potential for the original P-55 engine...which might actually work as predicted...
 
Instead of barely carrying 10,000 to Tokyo and back with initial engine life of 15 hours with the Wright 3350 air cooled engine, instead with the Allision things started off carrying 20,000 pounds to the North Islands, then progressed from there carrying 30,000 pounds of General LaMays (sp?) incendiary bomb campaign?

Going to the Wasp Major with 1300 HP more each, the B-50 didn't change the bombload, but allowed more fuel to be carried with that same bombload, faster, and a higher ceiling, and to do so, more reliably.
This won't get Japan to surrender any faster though.

Before Hiroshima, LeMay was running out of cities to torch with magnesium cased firebombs
 
Running out of big cities? Yes. Running out of ALL CITES? No. Running out of military targets? No way. The ugly and closely held fact about the infamous 3350 Twin Cyclone heavy bomber engine is that it was an abject failure. More brace B29 crewmen were lost due to their own aircraft than were lost to the Japanese. The Wright 3350 was most of that cause.
 
Believe that the disgraceful non-combat loss rate shown by R-3350 powered B-29s would have been very substantially reduced if , instead, it had been Allison powered (X)B-39s flying up to the Empire. Perhaps no quicker end to the war, but several thousand more airmen alive to celebrate.

Dynasoar
 
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