Alexander, I volunteer at the Seattle Museum of Flight with fellow volunteer Keith Man, created of the World War 2 Bombers UA-cam channel. In conversation with him, it was procedure to depressurize B-29s. The reason for this is because a pressurized bomber would explode if hit. Talking with another member who served during the Korean War as a rescue B-29 (stationed in Hawaii), B-29 crews would depressurize and suit into warm suits before combat was seen. Due to these two pieces of information, I don't believe the crews were "warm" when in combat. Edit: as some people have pointed out, the B-29 was warmer than B-17s or B-24s when depressurized. This is true for the reasons they say bellow. B-29 crews would however still need to don gear before depresurizing, although it was not to the extent of what B-17 and B-24 crews needed.
Thanks very much for letting me know this. As I hinted, I suspected that was universally the case. What I didn't think about, however, was depressurising would not allow for a heated cabin. I'm going to pin this comment for a while so it gets some visibility.
I recall when FIFI was at Boeing Field in the 90's for refit and repair, where one of the volunteers offered to fix the fire control for the turrets, a system that he'd worked on in WW2. when FiFI left to head home, her turrets worked to spec for the first time in decades, it was just amazing to see her flying home from where I used to work.
FiFi was actually the first plane i ever flew in as a kid, in the late 2010s. i don’t remember the date, or anything about it other then i really wanted to play some Ace Combat afterwards.
She no longer has any internals for the guns, the space is now used for storage of spares and cleaning supplies. A working turret does exist in the hanger where she resides in Dallas however.
I am looking forward to this. In the summer of 1984, I was taking "Introduction to Control Systems" which unfortunately should have been called "Mandarin 101 with LaPlace Transforms". Our professor, Dr. Cho, wheeled in a large panel, covered with analog meters, dials, plugs and switches. He told us this was an analog computer and it was junk, no one used analog computers any more and he refused to teach that obsolete junk to us. Two years later, I was doing a project at a chemical plant that used a mix of single loop controllers, 3-15psig pneumatic and 4-20ma signals and it dawned on me that this was the equipment he refused to teach us: Analog computers doing PID control. I think the key to why he refused to teach us lay less in obsolescence and more in his own lack of understanding of practical, real world control systems. I knew a man who had been a controls engineer at Exxon in the early days of process controls (1930s? - I was in my late 20s and he was in his early 80s, still working in instrumentation and controls). He told me stories about how they had to tune loops (when the controller didnt have enough turn down of gain / pband, or integral / reset functions) by adding larger tubing sections and putting things like corn cobs in the pipe and cutting the cobs to change the integral value. Good times, back then.
If you don’t mind, can you elaborate on how pneumatic control systems work? My Boilers professor-an old marine engineer/automation technician I think-briefly brought them up the other semester and didn’t explain much more than ‘god help you if actually find yourself working on these.’
@walterkennedy9474 That's way beyond the scope of a UA-cam comment but in a nutshell, data can be encoded in more than a 4-20ma or 1-5VDC signal. For instance, if a pressure value can be encoded so that 0psig=4ma, and 20psig=20ma and a valve can control that pressure with hardware that converts a 4-20ma signal to percentage open, then the same can be done using a 3-15psig signal. There's still applications for this technology: I'm researching whether I can get a pneumatic torque tube level device (a Fisher Leveltrol) for an application that kills electronics (high temperature). Pneumatic sensors are sometimes more resistant to temperature than many electronic devices.
That entire 6 minutes intro and disclaimer is pretty much half of my own life. I have always been fascinated by combat tech and war logistics, but I had to explain, more times than I ever wished, why I despise wars. To some, if not most people, wars and the machines used in them are impossible to separate. This is a terrible mistake. It is by looking at every detail with grace and respect (not by avoiding it) that we learn what made us kill each other with such mind-boggling efficiency. It is terrifying, but also marvelous.
@@andy41417 Exactly. The people of Imperial Japan believed they were a superior race. More men, women and children were murdered by Imperial Japan than Nazi Germany but nobody wants to acknowledge this.
My father flew aboard a B-29 as a radar operator, and was much decorated for his service (including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross). He was somewhat cheated out of his chance at being an officer, because he scored too well on an exam and was diverted out of pilot training into electronics school. ('Electronic warfare officer' is surely an officer nowadays, sometimes outranking the pilot, but back then was the job of a technical sergeant.) Radar and ECM were the responsibility of a single individual, although other crewmen would carry out tasks like dropping chaff and firing flares. He turned twenty a few weeks after the Japanese surrendered. His was not to reason why. The outcome may have been to alert the world to the horror of a total war. The great powers have fought only brushfire conflicts and proxy wars for nearly eighty years (the entirety of my life, and I'm an old man). That is nearly unprecedented in human history. We skate too close to the brink - but the fact that we've gone this far without destroying ourselves is not something I would have predicted in my youth. As far as the conduct of the war itself, I don't prescribe an opinion. There was surely more than enough wickedness to go around. Le May's decision to trade off defensive ammunition for bomb weight was resisted by his junior officers - but there was certainly a consensus reached that the armament wasn't needed for Super Dumbo rescue missions nor the mining of the Shimonoseki Strait. Arguably, part of the motivation for the Shimonoseki Strait interdiction was that the Twentieth Air Force was running out of targets. Japanese industry was in ruins. The failings of the Norden bombsight were nothing compared with those of the Wright R-3350 engine. My father insisted that the Wright Corporation killed more American air crews than the Japanese. One of the crashes that he survived was the result of an engine fire on takeoff. It's hard to research because no MACR was filed; the air crew was not missing, and the command staff decided to classify it as an accident whilst taxiing. The other crash was as a result of enemy fire. After the bird had taken heavy fire sufficient to disable the bomb bay doors, the gunners managed to open the doors by brute force with improvised tools, and the crew circled for a second, successful attempt to bomb the target. The aircraft then managed to limp to Iwo Jima and was actually repaired. The accident occurred in the skies over the totally un-google-able aircraft plant at Usa. Japan. In her short life, she suffered at least one more engine failure - including secondary damage from a windmilling prop that could not be feathered - plus a four-engine outage in flight when the updrafts over the Kobe firestorm on 17 March 1945 lifted the craft to an altitude where the engines could no longer function. (Three engines were successfully air-started once the aircraft had fallen to an altitude where there was enough air to do so, and she and her crew managed to limp back to the Marianas.) There's at least one photo of the _Enola Gay_ where my father's plane is visible - the W Circle 66 marking on the tail is legible in the photo. (She parked on the next hardstand over.) There was no "nose gunner". The bombardier sighted from his glassed-in forward position. When on an actual bombing run, he relinquished control of the guns to the ring gunner. The crewman listed as "nose gunner" on the crew manifest was in fact the radar operator. (Remember that airborne radar was a secret.) As far as I know, all the B-29s in combat service were radar-equipped, and the bunk room was a ruse created for an article about the B-29 in _Life_ magazine. Your mention of the 20mm cannons reminded me of a hilarious but vulgar story of a crewman with diarrhoea and a malfunctioning toilet. Apparently the improvised solution to the problem was to collect the material in 20mm ammo cans and drop it out the camera hatch, whereupon the slipstream caught it and deposited it on the empennage, causing the plane to return to Tinian with her tail dipped in you-know-what. An uneasy conversation with the crew chief, an excitable Irishman from Brooklyn, ensued. My father was also of the opinion that on a nighttime low-visibility raid, he was the only man aboard with the faintest idea what was going on outside. He would call out headings to the pilots, and count off seconds-to-release to the bombardier. His biased opinion was that without the AN/APQ-13 airborne radar, such operations would surely have been impossible. (Full marks to the British for developing the H2S and H2X, from which the engineers at Bell Labs and MIT learnt the basics.) After the war, the AN/APQ-13's were converted to service as weather radar. The last of them was in service as late as 1977.
@@ke9tv to my knowledge, only a few B-29s would be equipped with radars. If you look at Doc and Fifi, neither of them have radars. Talking with a crew member of Fifi, they said not all B-29s were equipped as for navigation only one or two in a squadron needed then. I am unsure about night bombing and at the time didn't think to ask them about it. Perhaps B-29s with the radar were prioritized for night raids?
Your info about the radar is very interesting to me. I remember my dad telling us he was a ground technician for the B-29 electromechanical gun system during the war. He got in so late (very young) that he wasn't sent overseas, only worked at a couple of bomber training bases. He was hired by Bell Labs when he was discharged - now I wonder if it was because he'd worked on the radar's electromechanical system also. Never mentioned that part but he always minimized his service to us kids, I think out of deference to those who served in combat. After a short time Bell Labs he went to work for an aerospace company that made fighters. He was only an engineering draftsman but may have gone to a higher level if he hadn't decide on a major change in his life direction and chosen a very different career.
@@peppapig9987 I have a copy of a 505th Bomb Group roster, in which every crew has a radar operator assigned. That is what gives me the (possibly incorrect) impression that the radar was standard equipment. It's possible that the 505th (my father's unit) was special. Their official history mentions that they supplied pathfinder aircraft and crews to other units.
Corrections: 08:35 Some analog electrical computers would have used vacuum tubes as components. What we think of as a ‘vacuum tube computer (colossus, eniac, the Manchester computers etc), were digital though. At 25:43 the wind curve isn't really correct. It would be an unequal S-curve in reality. 1:06:44 There is another! The ‘Angel of Deliverance’ is the last C-97 in flying condition.
When I listened to it live, the audio glitched every 20 seconds or so. I downloaded it, and I am not having any problems. An example would be at 57:28, I could only hear the name of one of the bombers. Holy Joe was glitched out, but now I can hear it.
You would have made a better video if you had just stated the truth, that OSS knew about Unit 731 and Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night as the US had broken Imperial Japan's code. Revisionists claim the idea was shelved by the Japanese Command before the end of the war. Considering that one of the I-400's sunk by the US Navy near Hawaii had live rats in cages, this Biological Warfare Attack had not been shelved. Then there was the threat to kill all Allied POW's by Imperial Japan, the reason the US claimed for using the Atom Bomb.The US also claimed that it was to prevent losing a lot of men should they invade the home islands... Personally, I would have used the first A-bomb on Unit 731 and instructed the Chinese Communists & Nationalist to create an Exclusion Zone. The second a-bomb on Tokyo Imperial Palace. The third a-bomb on the location of the Imperial Japans military command after the fled the first a-bomb... www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-2.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PX
Herre are the basic principles. 1 Numbers are represented as shaft turns. 2 Addition and Subtraction are performed by differential gears, like in a car. 3 To multiply and divide the shaft tuns are converted to logarithms using logarithmic cams and then converted back to a number with an anti-log cam. 4 For trigonometry the trigonometric data is machined onto trigonometric cams (which can be the log of a trig function) The rest is obvious. Some Early computers were almost completely manual but incorporated some electrical instruments. For instance imagine a telescopic sight and range finder tracking an aircraft. The range, elevation angle and bearing are transmitted to dial gauges (say galvanometers) using potentiometers/variable resistors or synchros or selsyns. 3 men then match the dial gauges by manually turning shafts. The mechanical calculations then turn the spherical coordinates into Cartesian. A second set of 3 men would then reenter the shaft positions by matching dials to a predictor computer. If variable speed drives were used to match the dial the speed in parametric form x,y,z would be available eg y=y't+v etc. The position of the target in say 10 second could be calculated. The ballistics computer would have cams for calculate the elevation, bearing and firing time with the data of shell flight times and superelevation encoded on cams. Another comouter would convert back to spherical coodinates, By the 1930s servo drives would reenter the data rather than match the dial which would need up to 9 men. These used vacum tubes so they really were electro-electronic mechanical.
I’ve always read that building the B-29 was more expensive than the Manhattan Project, and I guess I never really thought about the fact that it makes sense because the B-29 represents a huge leap forward in the miniaturization of electronics and the computerization of aircraft. The amount of design iteration, testing, and improvement on each feature must have been an incredible effort by Boeing. And at private sector prices too!
It's just a superficial utube factoid. It is pretty much meaningless to compare building several 1000 of one complex machine with developing another to the stage of just building a handful of prototypes. The cost of getting the B-29 to equivalent production prototype stage was just a few $M. It was the mass manufacturing of >3000 B-29s + spares which cost the $Bs - not the development. Using the above argument you could say the Model T Ford cost about the same as these programs.
@ The prototype stage swallows most of the cost of an aircraft - frequently half the cost of the program. That’s why modern aircraft won’t enter production unless at least a hundred are ordered. The Manhattan Project built hundreds of versions of the “Fat Man” bomb to get the high explosive initiator to get the fusing and explosive lenses right (and fired them with steel cores to watch the compression wave move through them using high speed x-ray films). They built 18 fully functional nuclear weapons up until mid 1946 (three were used in testing and two were dropped on Japan leaving thirteen in storage) and dropped a few hundred with impact fuses and no fissile material on Japan in 1945 to train the bombardiers.
@@allangibson8494 Accurate, sourced & relevant information rather than guesses would be better. The B-29 to the stage of ~20 production prototypes cost ~M$20 (US Govt contract figures) so didn't actually "swallow most" compared to the ~$B2+ for the mass manufacture of ~3900 more, did it ? The period originally quoted for this comparison is WWII, not up to mid 1946 or any other random date. Obviously, the cost of the A-bomb program would have been far higher than ~$B2 by 1946 - as fissile material production was overwhelmingly the most costly item. Not sure where you got the notion of 100s of 'Fat Man' bomb versions for testing. There was just 1 (one) full scale explosive lens test - Pajarito Canyon Test. Anyway those costs are trivial in relation - the Los Alamos work cost ~$M74. By the end the war a maximum of 4 A-bomb warheads had been constructed - essentially all prototypes. 1 for Trinity, 1 @ Hiroshima, 1 @ Nagasaki, 1 in preparation. If you wish to include the cheap - by comparison - full scale lens test without active core, that would be 5 devices.
That opening had me sobbing. Thank you for not ignoring the past of this engineering marvel, and thank you for highlighting what Japan did to China and Korea as possibly the worst human atrocity ever. Its virtually never discussed in the West, despite it killing as many if not more than the Holocaust.
It always amazing the sheer amount of ingenuity people have. All this would have to be all painstakingly mathed out and designed by hand. I swear some engineers are actual wizards in disguise.
@@Alexander-the-ok Exactly like everything else, from cathedrals to bridges to internal combustion engines and planes and ships were done without 3D modelling software. The torpedo data computers (TDC) of several nations dealt with quite a few similar problems like parallax (except that torpedoes after a straight run-out time would go on a turn to the right course, making parallax a bit more involved) and while speeds were a lot slower, lead times were minutes, not single seconds and ranges of 900 yard would be rather close distances.
@@Alexander-the-ok By hiring Peter Norton, or someone like me who can design in their head. Without more than a few measurements, while I didn't machine the adapter plate or the modified flywheel, I installed a water cooled inline 4 cylinder Hemi into my 1973 VW Westy. Toyota's 2TC engine was a copy of a Chrysler Hemi with one bank of cylinders removed. So I had a camper van that got 30 mpg at 70 mph after I tuned it, and had so much torque that 1st gear was basically unnecessary except when needing a creeper gear... Or in short, when I make something I have already designed it in my head... Unfortunately, with chronic medical as a drunk driver broke my back, and being "too intimidating" in appearance, as I have the typical broad Native build and have a form of Ocular Albinism that more than 1 in 3600 Natives have, I couldn't get a job in my field. Daylight blinds me, without a hat & sunglasses... For example, the HR Witch at the University of Michigan demanded to know where I served time at, said "be honest you don't even have a degree" and claimed that she could have me "arrested for not checking the box for having a felony". As she thought that the blank area on my resume was spent in the penitentiary, when actually I was in rehabilitation after almost being killed by Mr. Drunk Driver. I have two degrees and first attended the University of Michigan in my senior year in high school. I finished elsewhere because they would accommodate me after the accident. I didn't check the felony box because I have never been charged with a crime... Or in short, there is no protection from racism in the US if you are Native & you are not a member of a "Federally Recognized Nation"...
@@Alexander-the-ok look at the career of Russel W. Porter for an artist-architect-engineer who created 3-D modelling of the Palomar telescope with pen and paper in the 30-'ies-40-ies (page of stellafane) I guess there must have been many more like him. The man's brain was a CAD system and most amazing of all he never completed any degree he studied of the fields mentioned above.
The lead correction slotted "wheels" or gears are extremely interesting. Your explanation of them is fantastic. I think that nowhere near enough credit is given to those who had to create mechanical systems to, in essence, achieve digital results. A visual memory and a lot of imagination had to be needed. As a computer programmer in the 21st century, I feel like I am programming in a dark tunnel. What I create does not seem to have shapes. It does not appear to exist. It's too digital. Achieving such mechanical solutions in the 1940's and 50's must have been a lot more rewarding.
I restore 40mm Bofors mounts for naval museums for a living, and this is pretty much exactly how they were controlled on naval ships. I had no idea they were able to miniaturize it so much to fit onto an airplane. Amazing video!
It’s also pretty much how the centralised fire control on the Iowas worked. Granted, that also corrected for wave roll and was designed for calculating far greater distances, but the principle is the same. I think there’s a misconception around WW2 that because nothing was digital, nothing was advanced technology wise. Hell, they even had EWOs and jamming capability by the end of the war. It’s not talked about enough, they were far more advanced than general education would have you believe…
@tyler_bt3326 I believe it. I work on the Texas, so only the newer gun systems installed were this advanced. The Texas' main battery were much more manual then the Iowa's just due to age. But it was still good enough for her to complete her fire missions!
@you work on Texas? That’s awesome! Must be a lovely sight with all the restoration that’s been put into her. People like you are invaluable helping keeping history alive :) Sadly I’m from the UK, post-war bankruptcy meant that very few of our ships were preserved. We have Belfast and Cavalier from WW2, and Caroline from WW1 but other than that just lots of smaller monitors and support vessels. A shame really
@@tyler_bt3326 Oh dont get me started on Britian's lack of museum ships, I am originally from Scotland so I know the pain very well. Oh our dear Warspite.
@ at least Warspite went out on her own terms, beached herself on a lovely stretch of coast rather than be put in a filthy scrapyard to rust. Dismantled in situ, sure. But at least the view was nice. The one that annoys me is Vanguard. I understand the reasoning for not keeping Warspite, she was an absolute state and definitely not safe for civilians to visit. But vanguard was basically new, barely a scratch on her. Would have been amazing to tour.
If you ever get a chance to visit the battleship North Carolina museum, they have a Mark 4 analog fire control computer opened up and on display. Turning those settings wheels is almost a religious experience-the design, machining and build quality, level of accuracy, and the level of complexity seem almost miraculous as they analyze a dozen different variables at once. It’s like playing with alien technology.
There was also an advanced version of the B-29 called the B-50, which had automated radar guided guns. It was actually used widely until the 1960s, many being converted to tankers that even served in Vietnam
Miyazaki also said about aircraft that, while they are a dream given physical form, it is a cursed dream. That is true about how they became machines of death in war, and also in some other ways. Thank you for the intro and the "moral disclaimer". In such a long video one should take the time to mention the actual horrors of war, and you did it beautifully. A life is a life, and many of the actions taken by both the Japanese and the USians (and the Germans, the Brits, the Soviets, all sides probably) during WW2 were war crimes by today's standards.
Thanks very much. I actually take a lot of inspiration from the documentaries I watched as a kid that got me into engineering, so great to hear I’m passing some of that energy on!
Oh man, you should see the JU88 CCIP computer. Marvelously small. Or, better yet, WW2 battleship fire control. Most of them were kept in such secrecy they're still classified today. Massive and fantastic simultaneous realtime linear algebra solvers. We're talking dozens of variables at the same time. Accurately modeling the position of every gun barrel in 3D space with nothing but clockwork. Even the math channels won't touch it.
@@stug77 I knew they were advanced, but I never realized real time linear algebra levels of advaced. That is absolutly amazing, and crazy that they could create them in WW2.
No point keeping them secret. The British invented them and the Germans had very good ones as well. So did the Japanese. The US was ahead in miniaturization but the Germans had systems in development and has simple systems for the remote control turrets they had as well.
When a couple of Iowa's were reactivated under Reagan no effort was made to replace these with something more electronic, afaik. Hard to justify the development cost for such a limited use. But damn, it must have been hard to train people to maintain and repair them.
@@stug77 ballistic data as well as the trigonometric and logarithmic data needed for these calculations were encoded on three-dimensional cams. Generally they were cast into shape or made on a cam copying machine and then toolmaker would grind them to within 1000th of an inch tolerances. They were accurate as any digital computer because of the losses of accuracy in digital and digital to analog conversion of the sensors.
The amount of engineering knowledge that you have brought to this video is greater than a university degree paper, I cannot begin to fathom how you managed it.
Long-format Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, Supernova in the East Ep. I-VI cover the entire context beginning in 1973 back to the mid-1800s then forward. What happened in the 1970s? A WWII Japanese soldier surrendered. And he wasn't the only one who finally surrendered that year. And the two who did, didn't know each other and were on different islands. He covers American G.I.s walking beaches executing survivors. He covers the A-bomb. And, he makes You want it to happen. Brilliant 18hrs of podcast.
One thing that’s bothered me for a while is the attitude towards the Norden Bombsight - it still did significantly increase the accuracy of bombing. It allowed for higher-altitude missions to get similarly accurate results when compared to its predecessors, increasing the survivability of bombers, even if this reflected poorly on their accuracy. I think it’s generally underestimated just how inaccurate level bombing was, even with timing sights, and the Norden bombsight was still a significant advancement, but the myth of pinpoint precision touted by Norden Systems overshadowed its actual, tangible contributions.
Bomb sights aren’t very important for dropping nukes unless the entire purpose of the exercise is collecting data as part of a grotesque scientific experiment about the effects of different nuclear weapons on a population. Oh wait…
@@Alexander-the-ok I’m glad you made the footage, but more glad you didn’t catch your death out in that awful weather. I’m also surprised that much of the aircraft remains after all those years. I would never do it myself out of respect for what is clearly a grave site, but I find it hard to believe nobody has taken any souvenirs from that site in over 60 years.
After making this video I have a new appreciation for why everyone went to digital at the first opportunity. Just machining the components of these things must have been an absolute nightmare.
I greatly appreciate the overview of "computers". I have experience in using 60s and 70s vintage electronic analog computers (EAI TR10 & TR20). I've also watched videos on the US mechanical fire control computers on their battleships. So I know how analog computers work, and how to "program" them. Nothing like a digital computer. And as fire control computers go, think of them as dedicated apps.
I've only gotten halfway through the video in this sitting, but I have to say this is one of the most interesting topics you've covered. Maybe it is because it's a mechanical system instead of registers and bits, but the explanation is just so clear and captivating to me. Would definitely love videos on similar topics, maybe the Norden sight? What you mentioned is definitely different from the things I hear about it.
Thanks. I do plan to do at least one video on electromechanical missile guidance systems in the future. Could I do a dedicated video on the Norden bombsight? Honestly, I'll think about it.
@@Alexander-the-okLord Hardthrasher’s contextual (ahem) thrashing of the Norden sight was great but an engineering approach to how it was supposed to work followed by why it didn’t would be great. Also, never thought I’d care about analogue electromechanical computers, but this was a real eye opener. I had a vague understanding that the B29 programme was ridiculously expensive in its time but never understood why that would be. Now I see one aspect of why. I’d gladly spend a Friday evening listening how the B36’s fire control system worked because that looks like another crazy piece of electro-mech wizardry
So much of history needs to be taught through the lens of "I am not saying this is correct, only that it happened". This topic is fascinating, the context in which it was imagined and applied is another topic, but the technology developed for the task is staggering.
I have a can of the jellies featured in the movie. It has art of the girl carrying the same can of jellies. I know it's vapid consumerism, but it's a momento mori of the best things in life.
@@Dong_Harvey Relatedly and somewhat tragically, the company who made the candy tins shut down sometime around January last year. Shame, they were pretty tasty
The emotional gut punch I got from even that slight moment of recognition was deeply uncomfortable. One of the best movies I've ever seen. I refuse to watch it more than once. I've tried. Can't get past the opening credits.
This is why I subscribe to your channel! You go into incredibly deep detail that often goes right over my head about relatively-unknown subsystems in an otherwise well-known part of history. I wish there was some sort of game/simulator that could let you take control of these turrets and shoot down virtual targets.
This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The attention to detail is superb, and the explanations are clear for such a complex subject. Not only this but you addressed a rare point about the ethics of war machines. Asfascinatingg as the technology is we must remember that they were made to kill. The nuance and care you had is commendable. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Alex- I watch a lot of these sort of technical documentaries and this was probably the best video I've ever watched on UA-cam. Thank you so so much for your research and putting this together. Literally last week I was reading about the P63 which also used the remote turret. I had always known that the B29 used a remote fire control system, and even it took priority over the P 63 and was a reason why not many of them were ever used in theater with that turret. But I realized I didn't know how it worked, and after doing some research I couldn't really find anything like this video. I thought to myself, "man, I would love to see somebody like Alexander the OK make a documentary on this." When I saw this show up in my feed my jaw literally dropped. Your work is incredible. This video was, I think, your best. I absolutely adore the style and miniature models to show the analog function. I was grinning as you described how your viewers probably know why a differential functions, or how to shoot down a fighter from a B17, because that's exactly me and I love those old sort of informational videos. You perfectly captured that style in an intuitive way with this video. I literally cannot express how much I enjoyed watching this. Your channel has to be my favorite on UA-cam these days. Amazing video and I cannot wait to see your future work on the B36 if you're able to make that. When I finished watching this, I couldn't believe that I'm not supporting your Patreon. This content is better than anything I can pay for from a professional streaming service. You deserve more recognition than I can ever express to you. Thanks again and I look forward to supporting your work in the future :)
This is absolutely fascinating. It's a subject I always heard mentioned about the B29 but never explained. And your writing and presentation are flawless.
Absolutely incredible job not just with the cinematic animations, but the combined model and animation explanations also! Those were super helpful in understanding. I think you did a great job imitating the style of those legendary 40s and 50s videos.
I've been looking for a video about this for a long time! As a senior in mechanical engineering, I would say that you are probably the best engineering youtuber when it comes to the detail, accuracy, and presentation. I absolutely love your videos, and I hope you get the subscribers you deserve!!
I recently got heavy heavy into submarines being not really mechanically inclined. But damned was I when I started realising the analog computers they had a hundred years ago 😮
WOW!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU, FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPERLATIVE EFFORTS, TO EXPLAIN, AND DEMONSTRATE ALL OF THESE AMAZING, TECHNICAL HURDLES, IN GUNSIGHT DEVELOPMENT, IN THESE AIRCRAFT!!!
I love the Catalina too; if you haven't seen it, look for the "Landseaire" version of it. Basically someone converted a Catalina into a a flying RV and went around the world with it.
As a grandson of a B 29 Bombardier who participated in the firebombing of Tokyo and in recon flights pre Korean War, thank you for this video. I never got to ask my grandpa about his time in service before he passed in 2001.
This video is by FAR the best I've seen on this topic. You did a very good job not only explaining but also showing. Glad I subbed to this channel. This video was awesome. I loved all the hand made parts. Really shows you have an absolute understanding of the system.
1:12:33 "and they where largely retired after the war" That is kind of sort of but not really correct. The B29 was retired after the war, yes, the B50 was not. The B50 supose to only be a slight upgrade of the B29, but they ended up pretty much redesigning the whole wing. The fuselage was still mostly intact, that was developed into the C-97 that in turn was developed into the Boeing 377.
Yeah you're correct. I didn't really have time to go into the B-50 but I suppose I hinted at its existence when I said 'the B-29 engine issues weren't resolved until after the war'.
@Alexander-the-ok its one of those complicated things that dont have a clear simple corect answer. But in would say if the spitfire mk1 and mk24 is counted as the same model, sure as h*ck i would also count B29 amd B50
Your disclaimer is spot on. I'm a recently retired USAF Targeting Analyst certified in both nuclear and conventional weaponeering. The only saving grace of the atomic bombs becoming available for use when they did is because the alternative that was developed in case the atomic bomb project failed would have been far, far worse. The fire bombing of Tokyo on 9 March 1945 is considered the deadliest bombing in human history and was more destructive than both of the atomic bombings that happened later. Project X-Ray developed by the US Army Air Force, then later USMC was the go to plan if the Manhattan Project failed. The 330 B-29s over Tokyo each carried ≈ 1,200 M-69 incendiary bomblets that generated 400 fires per aircraft. The new bomb that would have been loaded 8 per aircraft would have started on average 4,700 fires per B-29. That horrible day in tokyo saw 132,000 fires that killed 100k people. Project X-ray employed in the same manner would have created 1,550,000 fires. Impossible to imagine the casualties from that.
I love seeing these sorts of oldschool computers showcased and explained. I work as a modern computer engineer, making chips for Intel, and it sometimes feels like the same job, just with different mechanisms to use and different linkages to tie them together. They used motors and relays and tubes, I use transistors and capacitors and resistors, but at the end of the day, we're both engineers tricking machines into doing math for us.
Greetings Alex. You've done an HUGE and excellent job here, Bravo man! Those engineers did a jaw-dropping job designing and making that turret system, it's almost beyond belief. Hats off to them. You gave us a good look into what they did. Excellent video with a finely balanced perspective. Many thanks and best wishes for your projects coming up!
Your use of hand-moved models against a dark background is delightfully simple - and effective. Your printed and machined plastic examples are complex and simple at the same time. Simple in the sense that they are transparently comprehensible. I especially like the one for the 5-dot sight. Damn, with the models you build (and figure out how to build) and the research you put an incredible amount of work into this video. And with good result, I actually understand this complex system. Great exposition, too.
if you want to demo the syncros, you can use a couple of car alternators! take off the regulator, apply AC to the field windings with a variac, and connect each of the three phases to the corresponding phase on the other alternator. Super fun demo!
Fascinating! Thank you for taking the time putting this historical information on the web. Please keep-up with this kind of content. Efforts like this make learning about this information accessible to the world and future generations. Thank you
Apparently The firebombing of Japan, was the only feasible way to destroy the Decentralized, low density manufacturing that prevented identifying and targeting factories like in Germany. I'm not sure but i think that was already a feature of there industry that they then doubled down on when the island started to come under attack.
It’s rarely mentioned that because of *Unit 731* and their holocaust level atrocities, Japan was 2 weeks away from a biological warfare attack on San Diego with billions of bubonic plague infected fleas. And worse. I’m just glad this video takes a step back and tries to have an open discussion on the topic not sterilize it with revisionist history
im only halfway through but this is already amazing. The physical models really make the concepts so much easier to understand, although i think someone needs to get you a cordless drill for christmas so you dont have to rotate all the parts by hand 😂
59:14 Your upper bound here is quite a bit lower than it should be. The reason is that the document you're using as a source has a third category, "Other Causes." While this includes losses as a result of mechanical failure, it also covers those for which the reason is not known for certain, i.e. bombers that never returned to base but were not observed going down by the rest of the formation. This likely includes a significant number of B-29s that fell out of contact with their formation for one reason or another, and were subsequently shot down by fighters. To further the point, it seems that Japanese historians have managed to cross-reference a number of these "Other Causes" with kill claims from their own sources. On that note, I'd also take the kill claims of the B-29s with a significant grain of salt, even if they are backed by gun cameras. The Germans (to use an example I'm familiar with) made quite heavy use of gun cameras, too, but the claims of their pilots are often found to be inflated by 50 or even 100%. Unfortunately I haven't come across any good sources on fighter losses from the Japanese side that can be used to cross-reference, and even with them it's a very tedious task, so the actual numbers will likely remain up in the air for the time being.
IIRC B-29 gunners claimed to shot down 27 MiG-15's throught their Korean deployment, when they at best got 2 (which may actually not match claims made by gunners, funnily enough).
The animation is insane wtf Edit: Don't open the read more Edit: To your point I am Indonesian, one of the countries that was briefly colonized by imperial Japan people in the 1940s described being under japan was worse than the 350 years under the Dutch Not much was documented in such a brief time, but the attrocities were. Japan till this day deny it's role in WWII and all the horrid things it has done. Was the level of destruction on Japanese populous centers was justified? Even I cannot answer that. So I don't understand why people are so easy to say "it's deserved/justified" when many of the deaths that happened was civilians, My country's civilians were conscripted, enslaved, 🍇ed, and every vile thing between hell and earth. Yet even I cannot wholeheartedly say, "Eye for an eye" I do not support indiscriminate bombings of civilian centers, even if their country has done horrible thing and even if they'd do horrible things for said country.
They were doing this in the 40's.... This is brilliant. That's why, when I see grainy footage of compact shapes moving quickly, it's these blokes. Not aliens.
If the Internet, which is always true, is to be believed, development of the B-29 cost as much or more than the Manhattan project. Given the complexities of the fire control of the turrets, i wouldn't be surprised if it's true. Also, if i remember correctly, the commemorative B-29s still flying have had their turbochargers removed and the cabin pressurization disabled. This severely nerfs their performance but considerably saves on wear and tear. This is a worthwhile trade when you're trying to keep 80 year old airframes in one piece and their engines running without spare parts infrastructure. And doing it on donations alone. For reference, a B-29 has around 328 spark plugs and they all need to be changed about every 100 hours of running.
Yes it is true, it cost considerably more than the Manhatten project. I knew Doc and Fifi aren't flown above 10000ft so they don't have to pressurise the cabins. I didn't know the turbochargers were removed though, it makes sense but I'd have never thought of that.
I talked with a member of the Fifi team about two months ago. Their engines dont just have the turbochargers removed. They are for the most part completly new engines. They perform about the same as the original 3350's, as long as not at high altitudes, but they are much easier to fix and much more reliable.
The intro animation was great and I really appreciate your opening disclaimer. The technology is certainly fascinating, but I think a lot of people are all too willing to ignore what purpose it ultimately served. On the topic of mechanical computers/control units, I would personally really be interested in a deep dive similar to this into the control unit of the BMW 801 or Jumo 213 engines fitted to Fw 190s. There does not seem to be a whole lot of readily available information on what to my knowledge amounts to the first mass deployed automated engine control units and you really have a knack for making topics like these interesting and digestible.
It's amazing how they got this technology developed, 'tested' and calibrated fast enough for it to still be of use in the war at all. I'm a design engineer, but to me it's almost equally amazing how you and especially Curious Marc, etc get your heads around this ancient, obsolete technology worked from whatever documentation still exists. Awesome work!
Your introduction was well measured and well contextualised. In truth, the computerised fire-control systems on B-29s were a truly astonishing marvel, when I first came to trip onto them. Perhaps an additional comment is warranted from me? The cost of developing the B=29 bomber was twice that of the entire Manhattan Project. $4 billion for the B=29 and only (?) $2 Billion for the Atom-Bomb. This makes total strategic sense, as a reliable delivery system was needed for nuclear weapons, once they were in serial production. It is (I still believe, a good thing that the Americans realised the first A-Bomb) very important that the A-Bomb was an effective foil against the Soviets at that time. One is still left wondering about the geopolitical consequences of following general Patton's dictum, of prolonging the fighting of WWII, to drive the USSR out of Eastern Europe, and thus obviating much of the mess, which devolved into the 70-year Cold War? Albeit, the Americans had certainly had a gut full of the fighting, and this would have been doubly the case with Britain and the Commonwealth. I would hold that the allied leaders meeting in Potsdam, Truman should have made more of a song and dance about the immenence of US power following the war's end, to Stalin. Thereby placing him onto his back foot, and pushed him into more favourable terms with the slicing of the pie, which Europe had, by then, become. For, as we now know, the Cold War inflicted the most heinous of crimes against enormous swaths of the world's people. Solzinytzen spoke of the big lie, which everyone needed to participate in, for communism to succeed even marginally.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes. Survivorship bias is the main source of "they don't make them like they used to". For most products, the reason why people don't make them like that is because THEY LEARNED FROM THEIR MISTAKES. The ones that survive are the ones that can't be made any better for whatever reason. Or they they **can** be made "better" but the oldies that survived have some particular superior quality/qualities. I sell auto parts to the public. I hear "they don't make them like they used too" a lot.
In fairness, the rise of serializing parts to the onboard computer & encasing all fuses, capacitors, circuit boards, & etc in plastic behind proprietary connectors is a valid example of “they don’t make them like they used to.” Gone are the days of going to a junkyard and pulling the perfectly working parts off another car to fix yours. You’d have to then go to an approved shop and hope they paid the thousands to get the “reprogramming” tool & pay hundreds for the “service.” See also: nearly everything that’s driving the insanely high EV write-off rate.
I'm old enough to remember cars in the 70s and 80s and am perfectly happy that cars aren't "made like they used to." I also remember pulling to a full service pump to please "add oil and check the gas." Sure there are dome nice 40 year old vehicles on the road, but how many of those are K-cars? Survivorship bias indeed.
Very good vlog, also good statement on the perspective of the use of bombing. My late father was in the RN (in Burma upon the surrender of the Japanese and releasing allied POW’s ) Although I fully understand your statement you have to understand the inhuman treatment of allied POW’s and the use by the Japanese of bio-chemical warfare upon both civilians and allied POW’s (over 2.5 million Chinese killed by the release of plague) the Japanese never apologised. This influence generations attitude on this subject. I agree the Mosquito was a fantastic aircraft and was built against all odds as the ministry of aircraft production tried repeatedly to close it down. Both the Germans and the US tried to emulate it, the Germans had some very advanced aircraft designs but failed to focus on one and build any in sufficient numbers ie ME262 Again great informative vlog - learnt a lot.
Thanks. My grandfather was never sent to the front lines, but many of his friends ended up in Burma. He NEVER forgave the Japanese, it was really sad. 60 years later and we just could not convince him what he referred to as ‘Japan’ no longer existed. That is why I don’t make sweeping statements about the Allied bombing being ‘unjustified’. In fact, that’s the reason I briefly tore down some of the alternatives onscreen. I wasnt there, I dont get to make moral judgements.
@@Alexander-the-ok I agree with you Alex.And I found your intro finely balanced and appropriate. I think we have to say "It is what it is". Fine-sounding moral judgements are too easy to come by, and have little to no value.
Isn't a computer just, you know, a thing that computes? It may not be an all-purpose computer but if it does calculation it is a computer nonetheless. At least that is how I think about it. I'm okay with a calculator and a sliderule to both be computers.
Only 1/3 of the way through this one at time of writing, but, man, Alex, your video quality keeps improving. I also want to say that I really appreciate the level of tact you bring to difficult subjects. It can be simultaneously true that the acts of WW2 were atrocities, and that the engineering around them is absolutely fascinating and we can learn a lot from them. I really appreciate your willingness to tackle that dichotomy right from the outset.
A truly wonderful video on such a beautiful aircraft. I really admire how above and beyond you went with the modeling in this. Can’t wait for the B-36 video!
Alexander, I volunteer at the Seattle Museum of Flight with fellow volunteer Keith Man, created of the World War 2 Bombers UA-cam channel.
In conversation with him, it was procedure to depressurize B-29s. The reason for this is because a pressurized bomber would explode if hit.
Talking with another member who served during the Korean War as a rescue B-29 (stationed in Hawaii), B-29 crews would depressurize and suit into warm suits before combat was seen. Due to these two pieces of information, I don't believe the crews were "warm" when in combat.
Edit: as some people have pointed out, the B-29 was warmer than B-17s or B-24s when depressurized. This is true for the reasons they say bellow. B-29 crews would however still need to don gear before depresurizing, although it was not to the extent of what B-17 and B-24 crews needed.
Thanks very much for letting me know this. As I hinted, I suspected that was universally the case. What I didn't think about, however, was depressurising would not allow for a heated cabin. I'm going to pin this comment for a while so it gets some visibility.
I think that might've been an unrealistic fear due to pressurization being a new thing, but I suppose a crack could've unzipped
@Alexander-the-ok also,
oxygen at high level.
Next time you see Mr Man, tell him I think he has an awesome channel!
@@paulmartin4168 they had masks connected to a central oxegyn supply for this.
That opening animation was absolutely jaw dropping.
for real, absolutely top notch
Literally
Alex and Artem have come
So far it is incredible. Easily one of the best creator duos out there.
Also based on The Wind Rises
Yea seriously. Had to come here early to say the same. Turnt to 11.
I recall when FIFI was at Boeing Field in the 90's for refit and repair, where one of the volunteers offered to fix the fire control for the turrets, a system that he'd worked on in WW2. when FiFI left to head home, her turrets worked to spec for the first time in decades, it was just amazing to see her flying home from where I used to work.
That is amazing. I wasn't even aware the turret system in Fifi was original.
FiFi was actually the first plane i ever flew in as a kid, in the late 2010s. i don’t remember the date, or anything about it other then i really wanted to play some Ace Combat afterwards.
That is dedication to long term product support.
That volunteer did awesome work preserving history, considering that might be the only operating system in the world
She no longer has any internals for the guns, the space is now used for storage of spares and cleaning supplies. A working turret does exist in the hanger where she resides in Dallas however.
I am looking forward to this.
In the summer of 1984, I was taking "Introduction to Control Systems" which unfortunately should have been called "Mandarin 101 with LaPlace Transforms".
Our professor, Dr. Cho, wheeled in a large panel, covered with analog meters, dials, plugs and switches. He told us this was an analog computer and it was junk, no one used analog computers any more and he refused to teach that obsolete junk to us.
Two years later, I was doing a project at a chemical plant that used a mix of single loop controllers, 3-15psig pneumatic and 4-20ma signals and it dawned on me that this was the equipment he refused to teach us: Analog computers doing PID control.
I think the key to why he refused to teach us lay less in obsolescence and more in his own lack of understanding of practical, real world control systems.
I knew a man who had been a controls engineer at Exxon in the early days of process controls (1930s? - I was in my late 20s and he was in his early 80s, still working in instrumentation and controls). He told me stories about how they had to tune loops (when the controller didnt have enough turn down of gain / pband, or integral / reset functions) by adding larger tubing sections and putting things like corn cobs in the pipe and cutting the cobs to change the integral value. Good times, back then.
If you don’t mind, can you elaborate on how pneumatic control systems work? My Boilers professor-an old marine engineer/automation technician I think-briefly brought them up the other semester and didn’t explain much more than ‘god help you if actually find yourself working on these.’
My favorite common example is old automatic transmissions. The valve body is a Hydraulic analog computer
@walterkennedy9474 That's way beyond the scope of a UA-cam comment but in a nutshell, data can be encoded in more than a 4-20ma or 1-5VDC signal. For instance, if a pressure value can be encoded so that 0psig=4ma, and 20psig=20ma and a valve can control that pressure with hardware that converts a 4-20ma signal to percentage open, then the same can be done using a 3-15psig signal. There's still applications for this technology: I'm researching whether I can get a pneumatic torque tube level device (a Fisher Leveltrol) for an application that kills electronics (high temperature). Pneumatic sensors are sometimes more resistant to temperature than many electronic devices.
Corn cob based computing could be the next big thing. Quantum cobputing. We’ve seen the limitations of silicon. Bring on the COB.
yeah, even back then, those weren't really common. Really useful for fluid dynamics though
That entire 6 minutes intro and disclaimer is pretty much half of my own life. I have always been fascinated by combat tech and war logistics, but I had to explain, more times than I ever wished, why I despise wars. To some, if not most people, wars and the machines used in them are impossible to separate. This is a terrible mistake. It is by looking at every detail with grace and respect (not by avoiding it) that we learn what made us kill each other with such mind-boggling efficiency. It is terrifying, but also marvelous.
This is a very thoughtful comment. Thank you.
Most people would understand very quickly if they ever had to experience war.
Japanese superiority complex contributed to war. Same in Germany. Banderites same but rely on donated equipment.
@@andy41417 Exactly. The people of Imperial Japan believed they were a superior race. More men, women and children were murdered by Imperial Japan than Nazi Germany but nobody wants to acknowledge this.
My father flew aboard a B-29 as a radar operator, and was much decorated for his service (including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross). He was somewhat cheated out of his chance at being an officer, because he scored too well on an exam and was diverted out of pilot training into electronics school. ('Electronic warfare officer' is surely an officer nowadays, sometimes outranking the pilot, but back then was the job of a technical sergeant.) Radar and ECM were the responsibility of a single individual, although other crewmen would carry out tasks like dropping chaff and firing flares.
He turned twenty a few weeks after the Japanese surrendered. His was not to reason why.
The outcome may have been to alert the world to the horror of a total war. The great powers have fought only brushfire conflicts and proxy wars for nearly eighty years (the entirety of my life, and I'm an old man). That is nearly unprecedented in human history. We skate too close to the brink - but the fact that we've gone this far without destroying ourselves is not something I would have predicted in my youth.
As far as the conduct of the war itself, I don't prescribe an opinion. There was surely more than enough wickedness to go around.
Le May's decision to trade off defensive ammunition for bomb weight was resisted by his junior officers - but there was certainly a consensus reached that the armament wasn't needed for Super Dumbo rescue missions nor the mining of the Shimonoseki Strait. Arguably, part of the motivation for the Shimonoseki Strait interdiction was that the Twentieth Air Force was running out of targets. Japanese industry was in ruins.
The failings of the Norden bombsight were nothing compared with those of the Wright R-3350 engine. My father insisted that the Wright Corporation killed more American air crews than the Japanese. One of the crashes that he survived was the result of an engine fire on takeoff. It's hard to research because no MACR was filed; the air crew was not missing, and the command staff decided to classify it as an accident whilst taxiing. The other crash was as a result of enemy fire. After the bird had taken heavy fire sufficient to disable the bomb bay doors, the gunners managed to open the doors by brute force with improvised tools, and the crew circled for a second, successful attempt to bomb the target. The aircraft then managed to limp to Iwo Jima and was actually repaired. The accident occurred in the skies over the totally un-google-able aircraft plant at Usa. Japan. In her short life, she suffered at least one more engine failure - including secondary damage from a windmilling prop that could not be feathered - plus a four-engine outage in flight when the updrafts over the Kobe firestorm on 17 March 1945 lifted the craft to an altitude where the engines could no longer function. (Three engines were successfully air-started once the aircraft had fallen to an altitude where there was enough air to do so, and she and her crew managed to limp back to the Marianas.) There's at least one photo of the _Enola Gay_ where my father's plane is visible - the W Circle 66 marking on the tail is legible in the photo. (She parked on the next hardstand over.)
There was no "nose gunner". The bombardier sighted from his glassed-in forward position. When on an actual bombing run, he relinquished control of the guns to the ring gunner. The crewman listed as "nose gunner" on the crew manifest was in fact the radar operator. (Remember that airborne radar was a secret.) As far as I know, all the B-29s in combat service were radar-equipped, and the bunk room was a ruse created for an article about the B-29 in _Life_ magazine.
Your mention of the 20mm cannons reminded me of a hilarious but vulgar story of a crewman with diarrhoea and a malfunctioning toilet. Apparently the improvised solution to the problem was to collect the material in 20mm ammo cans and drop it out the camera hatch, whereupon the slipstream caught it and deposited it on the empennage, causing the plane to return to Tinian with her tail dipped in you-know-what. An uneasy conversation with the crew chief, an excitable Irishman from Brooklyn, ensued.
My father was also of the opinion that on a nighttime low-visibility raid, he was the only man aboard with the faintest idea what was going on outside. He would call out headings to the pilots, and count off seconds-to-release to the bombardier. His biased opinion was that without the AN/APQ-13 airborne radar, such operations would surely have been impossible. (Full marks to the British for developing the H2S and H2X, from which the engineers at Bell Labs and MIT learnt the basics.) After the war, the AN/APQ-13's were converted to service as weather radar. The last of them was in service as late as 1977.
@@ke9tv to my knowledge, only a few B-29s would be equipped with radars. If you look at Doc and Fifi, neither of them have radars. Talking with a crew member of Fifi, they said not all B-29s were equipped as for navigation only one or two in a squadron needed then.
I am unsure about night bombing and at the time didn't think to ask them about it. Perhaps B-29s with the radar were prioritized for night raids?
@@peppapig9987All the atomic capable B-29’s were fitted with a version of the British H2X ground mapping & bombing radar…
Interesante su comentario
Your info about the radar is very interesting to me. I remember my dad telling us he was a ground technician for the B-29 electromechanical gun system during the war. He got in so late (very young) that he wasn't sent overseas, only worked at a couple of bomber training bases. He was hired by Bell Labs when he was discharged - now I wonder if it was because he'd worked on the radar's electromechanical system also. Never mentioned that part but he always minimized his service to us kids, I think out of deference to those who served in combat. After a short time Bell Labs he went to work for an aerospace company that made fighters. He was only an engineering draftsman but may have gone to a higher level if he hadn't decide on a major change in his life direction and chosen a very different career.
@@peppapig9987 I have a copy of a 505th Bomb Group roster, in which every crew has a radar operator assigned. That is what gives me the (possibly incorrect) impression that the radar was standard equipment. It's possible that the 505th (my father's unit) was special. Their official history mentions that they supplied pathfinder aircraft and crews to other units.
Corrections:
08:35 Some analog electrical computers would have used vacuum tubes as components. What we think of as a ‘vacuum tube computer (colossus, eniac, the Manchester computers etc), were digital though.
At 25:43 the wind curve isn't really correct. It would be an unequal S-curve in reality.
1:06:44 There is another! The ‘Angel of Deliverance’ is the last C-97 in flying condition.
When I listened to it live, the audio glitched every 20 seconds or so. I downloaded it, and I am not having any problems.
An example would be at 57:28, I could only hear the name of one of the bombers. Holy Joe was glitched out, but now I can hear it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who realises, typically within seconds of rewatching, that they've messed something up ;)
@@mtylerwthat'll be a connection problem at your end
Appreciate your diligence and care when presenting these topics my dude
You would have made a better video if you had just stated the truth, that OSS knew about Unit 731 and Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night as the US had broken Imperial Japan's code. Revisionists claim the idea was shelved by the Japanese Command before the end of the war. Considering that one of the I-400's sunk by the US Navy near Hawaii had live rats in cages, this Biological Warfare Attack had not been shelved. Then there was the threat to kill all Allied POW's by Imperial Japan, the reason the US claimed for using the Atom Bomb.The US also claimed that it was to prevent losing a lot of men should they invade the home islands...
Personally, I would have used the first A-bomb on Unit 731 and instructed the Chinese Communists & Nationalist to create an Exclusion Zone. The second a-bomb on Tokyo Imperial Palace. The third a-bomb on the location of the Imperial Japans military command after the fled the first a-bomb...
www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-2.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PX
i don’t care if i have a final exam tomorrow, it’s time to learn about analogue computing :D
Hopefully your exam is in analogue computing 😂
Herre are the basic principles.
1 Numbers are represented as shaft turns.
2 Addition and Subtraction are performed by differential gears, like in a car.
3 To multiply and divide the shaft tuns are converted to logarithms using logarithmic cams and then converted back to a number with an anti-log cam.
4 For trigonometry the trigonometric data is machined onto trigonometric cams (which can be the log of a trig function)
The rest is obvious.
Some Early computers were almost completely manual but incorporated some electrical instruments.
For instance imagine a telescopic sight and range finder tracking an aircraft. The range, elevation angle and bearing are transmitted to dial gauges (say galvanometers) using potentiometers/variable resistors or synchros or selsyns. 3 men then match the dial gauges by manually turning shafts. The mechanical calculations then turn the spherical coordinates into Cartesian. A second set of 3 men would then reenter the shaft positions by matching dials to a predictor computer. If variable speed drives were used to match the dial the speed in parametric form x,y,z would be available eg y=y't+v etc. The position of the target in say 10 second could be calculated.
The ballistics computer would have cams for calculate the elevation, bearing and firing time with the data of shell flight times and superelevation encoded on cams.
Another comouter would convert back to spherical coodinates,
By the 1930s servo drives would reenter the data rather than match the dial which would need up to 9 men.
These used vacum tubes so they really were electro-electronic mechanical.
Same lol
Find a video about Moog synths! Alternatively, read a text book or regret having not paid attention during your course.
@@williamzk9083 Bollox.
I’ve always read that building the B-29 was more expensive than the Manhattan Project, and I guess I never really thought about the fact that it makes sense because the B-29 represents a huge leap forward in the miniaturization of electronics and the computerization of aircraft. The amount of design iteration, testing, and improvement on each feature must have been an incredible effort by Boeing. And at private sector prices too!
The B-29 was more than twice as expensive as the Manhattan Project…
lets not also forget the pressurization system too, loads of early-mid cold war era, necessities crammed into a weapon out of the 1940s.
It's just a superficial utube factoid. It is pretty much meaningless to compare building several 1000 of one complex machine with developing another to the stage of just building a handful of prototypes. The cost of getting the B-29 to equivalent production prototype stage was just a few $M. It was the mass manufacturing of >3000 B-29s + spares which cost the $Bs - not the development. Using the above argument you could say the Model T Ford cost about the same as these programs.
@ The prototype stage swallows most of the cost of an aircraft - frequently half the cost of the program.
That’s why modern aircraft won’t enter production unless at least a hundred are ordered. The Manhattan Project built hundreds of versions of the “Fat Man” bomb to get the high explosive initiator to get the fusing and explosive lenses right (and fired them with steel cores to watch the compression wave move through them using high speed x-ray films).
They built 18 fully functional nuclear weapons up until mid 1946 (three were used in testing and two were dropped on Japan leaving thirteen in storage) and dropped a few hundred with impact fuses and no fissile material on Japan in 1945 to train the bombardiers.
@@allangibson8494 Accurate, sourced & relevant information rather than guesses would be better. The B-29 to the stage of ~20 production prototypes cost ~M$20 (US Govt contract figures) so didn't actually "swallow most" compared to the ~$B2+ for the mass manufacture of ~3900 more, did it ? The period originally quoted for this comparison is WWII, not up to mid 1946 or any other random date. Obviously, the cost of the A-bomb program would have been far higher than ~$B2 by 1946 - as fissile material production was overwhelmingly the most costly item. Not sure where you got the notion of 100s of 'Fat Man' bomb versions for testing. There was just 1 (one) full scale explosive lens test - Pajarito Canyon Test. Anyway those costs are trivial in relation - the Los Alamos work cost ~$M74. By the end the war a maximum of 4 A-bomb warheads had been constructed - essentially all prototypes. 1 for Trinity, 1 @ Hiroshima, 1 @ Nagasaki, 1 in preparation. If you wish to include the cheap - by comparison - full scale lens test without active core, that would be 5 devices.
My guy... this was a banger.
@@AnimarchyHistory why am I unsurprised that you watch Alexander the okay?
Btw your recent video was great! Cant wait for the next one!
Omg a 2 hour video on crap Russian jets? If i wasnt stuck in bed horribly ill right now, that’d be going straight on.
@@Alexander-the-ok it’s a great one even if I do say myself. I went down a rabbit hole of unprecedented proportions.
I hope you feel better mate!
That opening had me sobbing. Thank you for not ignoring the past of this engineering marvel, and thank you for highlighting what Japan did to China and Korea as possibly the worst human atrocity ever. Its virtually never discussed in the West, despite it killing as many if not more than the Holocaust.
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, Supernova in the East.
It always amazing the sheer amount of ingenuity people have. All this would have to be all painstakingly mathed out and designed by hand. I swear some engineers are actual wizards in disguise.
how on earth this was done without 3D modelling software, I'll never understand.
@@Alexander-the-ok Exactly like everything else, from cathedrals to bridges to internal combustion engines and planes and ships were done without 3D modelling software.
The torpedo data computers (TDC) of several nations dealt with quite a few similar problems like parallax (except that torpedoes after a straight run-out time would go on a turn to the right course, making parallax a bit more involved) and while speeds were a lot slower, lead times were minutes, not single seconds and ranges of 900 yard would be rather close distances.
@@Alexander-the-ok By hiring Peter Norton, or someone like me who can design in their head. Without more than a few measurements, while I didn't machine the adapter plate or the modified flywheel, I installed a water cooled inline 4 cylinder Hemi into my 1973 VW Westy. Toyota's 2TC engine was a copy of a Chrysler Hemi with one bank of cylinders removed. So I had a camper van that got 30 mpg at 70 mph after I tuned it, and had so much torque that 1st gear was basically unnecessary except when needing a creeper gear...
Or in short, when I make something I have already designed it in my head...
Unfortunately, with chronic medical as a drunk driver broke my back, and being "too intimidating" in appearance, as I have the typical broad Native build and have a form of Ocular Albinism that more than 1 in 3600 Natives have, I couldn't get a job in my field. Daylight blinds me, without a hat & sunglasses...
For example, the HR Witch at the University of Michigan demanded to know where I served time at, said "be honest you don't even have a degree" and claimed that she could have me "arrested for not checking the box for having a felony". As she thought that the blank area on my resume was spent in the penitentiary, when actually I was in rehabilitation after almost being killed by Mr. Drunk Driver. I have two degrees and first attended the University of Michigan in my senior year in high school. I finished elsewhere because they would accommodate me after the accident. I didn't check the felony box because I have never been charged with a crime...
Or in short, there is no protection from racism in the US if you are Native & you are not a member of a "Federally Recognized Nation"...
@@Alexander-the-ok look at the career of Russel W. Porter for an artist-architect-engineer who created 3-D modelling of the Palomar telescope with pen and paper in the 30-'ies-40-ies (page of stellafane) I guess there must have been many more like him. The man's brain was a CAD system and most amazing of all he never completed any degree he studied of the fields mentioned above.
@@davidhollenshead4892OK dude
The lead correction slotted "wheels" or gears are extremely interesting. Your explanation of them is fantastic.
I think that nowhere near enough credit is given to those who had to create mechanical systems to, in essence, achieve digital results. A visual memory and a lot of imagination had to be needed.
As a computer programmer in the 21st century, I feel like I am programming in a dark tunnel. What I create does not seem to have shapes. It does not appear to exist. It's too digital.
Achieving such mechanical solutions in the 1940's and 50's must have been a lot more rewarding.
analog programming
I restore 40mm Bofors mounts for naval museums for a living, and this is pretty much exactly how they were controlled on naval ships. I had no idea they were able to miniaturize it so much to fit onto an airplane. Amazing video!
It’s also pretty much how the centralised fire control on the Iowas worked. Granted, that also corrected for wave roll and was designed for calculating far greater distances, but the principle is the same.
I think there’s a misconception around WW2 that because nothing was digital, nothing was advanced technology wise. Hell, they even had EWOs and jamming capability by the end of the war.
It’s not talked about enough, they were far more advanced than general education would have you believe…
@tyler_bt3326 I believe it. I work on the Texas, so only the newer gun systems installed were this advanced. The Texas' main battery were much more manual then the Iowa's just due to age. But it was still good enough for her to complete her fire missions!
@you work on Texas? That’s awesome!
Must be a lovely sight with all the restoration that’s been put into her. People like you are invaluable helping keeping history alive :)
Sadly I’m from the UK, post-war bankruptcy meant that very few of our ships were preserved. We have Belfast and Cavalier from WW2, and Caroline from WW1 but other than that just lots of smaller monitors and support vessels. A shame really
@@tyler_bt3326 Oh dont get me started on Britian's lack of museum ships, I am originally from Scotland so I know the pain very well. Oh our dear Warspite.
@ at least Warspite went out on her own terms, beached herself on a lovely stretch of coast rather than be put in a filthy scrapyard to rust. Dismantled in situ, sure. But at least the view was nice.
The one that annoys me is Vanguard. I understand the reasoning for not keeping Warspite, she was an absolute state and definitely not safe for civilians to visit. But vanguard was basically new, barely a scratch on her. Would have been amazing to tour.
The B-29 cutaway is absolutely incredible!
I spent an embarrassing amount of time on that.
@@Alexander-the-ok There is nothing embarrassing about creating art.
If you ever get a chance to visit the battleship North Carolina museum, they have a Mark 4 analog fire control computer opened up and on display. Turning those settings wheels is almost a religious experience-the design, machining and build quality, level of accuracy, and the level of complexity seem almost miraculous as they analyze a dozen different variables at once. It’s like playing with alien technology.
There was also an advanced version of the B-29 called the B-50, which had automated radar guided guns. It was actually used widely until the 1960s, many being converted to tankers that even served in Vietnam
Yes, the re-designation and many variants are a lengthy subject.
This is one of the best explanations of any system I've ever seen nevertheless something this complicated!!
Cool seeing you here!
The cockpit was the inspiration for the Aluminum Falcon. "I wouldn't know, I'm not a Star Trek fan."
Killed me, bro!
🤣
Miyazaki also said about aircraft that, while they are a dream given physical form, it is a cursed dream. That is true about how they became machines of death in war, and also in some other ways. Thank you for the intro and the "moral disclaimer". In such a long video one should take the time to mention the actual horrors of war, and you did it beautifully. A life is a life, and many of the actions taken by both the Japanese and the USians (and the Germans, the Brits, the Soviets, all sides probably) during WW2 were war crimes by today's standards.
Well done, Sir! I really enjoyed this and understand the effort a video like this demands.
Thanks very much
Your videos make me want to get into engineering and it always makes my day when you release a new one. Keep up the excellent work, dude!
Thanks very much. I actually take a lot of inspiration from the documentaries I watched as a kid that got me into engineering, so great to hear I’m passing some of that energy on!
Oh man, you should see the JU88 CCIP computer. Marvelously small.
Or, better yet, WW2 battleship fire control. Most of them were kept in such secrecy they're still classified today. Massive and fantastic simultaneous realtime linear algebra solvers. We're talking dozens of variables at the same time. Accurately modeling the position of every gun barrel in 3D space with nothing but clockwork. Even the math channels won't touch it.
Humm… many we can convince Alex to do a vid on that…
@@stug77 I knew they were advanced, but I never realized real time linear algebra levels of advaced.
That is absolutly amazing, and crazy that they could create them in WW2.
No point keeping them secret. The British invented them and the Germans had very good ones as well. So did the Japanese. The US was ahead in miniaturization but the Germans had systems in development and has simple systems for the remote control turrets they had as well.
When a couple of Iowa's were reactivated under Reagan no effort was made to replace these with something more electronic, afaik. Hard to justify the development cost for such a limited use. But damn, it must have been hard to train people to maintain and repair them.
@@stug77 ballistic data as well as the trigonometric and logarithmic data needed for these calculations were encoded on three-dimensional cams. Generally they were cast into shape or made on a cam copying machine and then toolmaker would grind them to within 1000th of an inch tolerances. They were accurate as any digital computer because of the losses of accuracy in digital and digital to analog conversion of the sensors.
The amount of engineering knowledge that you have brought to this video is greater than a university degree paper, I cannot begin to fathom how you managed it.
I appreciate the way you handled the context. A good balance of bluntly acknowledging it and then moving on.
Long-format Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, Supernova in the East Ep. I-VI cover the entire context beginning in 1973 back to the mid-1800s then forward.
What happened in the 1970s? A WWII Japanese soldier surrendered. And he wasn't the only one who finally surrendered that year. And the two who did, didn't know each other and were on different islands.
He covers American G.I.s walking beaches executing survivors. He covers the A-bomb. And, he makes You want it to happen. Brilliant 18hrs of podcast.
The context was USA getting away with the worst war crime in history
So excited every time you upload, that model you made is amazing
I made far too much effort with that model.
The stab at the A-10 tells me that you’re a man of culture and knowledge. And citing Lord Hardthrasher confirmed it.
It’s not even a good stab, though. Obsolescent stuff belongs in museums.
@@Florkl Yep, the A-10 is a lesson.
@@theothertonydutch The question is, what is it meant to teach and what people think it teaches them …
Big gun go brrrrrr ....
The "mazer porky" has conditioned me to say that 😅
One thing that’s bothered me for a while is the attitude towards the Norden Bombsight - it still did significantly increase the accuracy of bombing. It allowed for higher-altitude missions to get similarly accurate results when compared to its predecessors, increasing the survivability of bombers, even if this reflected poorly on their accuracy.
I think it’s generally underestimated just how inaccurate level bombing was, even with timing sights, and the Norden bombsight was still a significant advancement, but the myth of pinpoint precision touted by Norden Systems overshadowed its actual, tangible contributions.
Bomb sights aren’t very important for dropping nukes unless the entire purpose of the exercise is collecting data as part of a grotesque scientific experiment about the effects of different nuclear weapons on a population. Oh wait…
To address the most important point in the whole video...
Captain Spock is by far my favourite Jedi in Spacefleet.
I have a shirt with a Dalek on the front that says "R2D2! I loved him in Star Trek!"
Movie buffs everywhere will always remember Captain Spock's most famous line--"This is not the Aluminum Falcon you're looking for."
The wreckage at the start looks like the crashed B29 in Peak District. Quite a beautiful place to visit on the rare days the weather is good.
It is. I very nearly didn't make it because the weather was horrendous - it was during the storm last weekend.
@@Alexander-the-ok i live i oxfordshire, i can only imagine how windy it must have been in the peak district last weekend!
@@Alexander-the-ok I’m glad you made the footage, but more glad you didn’t catch your death out in that awful weather.
I’m also surprised that much of the aircraft remains after all those years. I would never do it myself out of respect for what is clearly a grave site, but I find it hard to believe nobody has taken any souvenirs from that site in over 60 years.
Awww yissss! I love non-digital computers.
After making this video I have a new appreciation for why everyone went to digital at the first opportunity. Just machining the components of these things must have been an absolute nightmare.
@Alexander-the-ok Yeah. Even electronic analog computers sound like a pain in the ass. And that's waaaaay easier than mechanical.
@@Alexander-the-ok DO EARLY MISSILE COMPUTERS PLZZZZ
I greatly appreciate the overview of "computers". I have experience in using 60s and 70s vintage electronic analog computers (EAI TR10 & TR20). I've also watched videos on the US mechanical fire control computers on their battleships. So I know how analog computers work, and how to "program" them. Nothing like a digital computer. And as fire control computers go, think of them as dedicated apps.
Dedicated apps! I love that!
I'll be honest, electrical analog computers are a complete enigma to me...I think I need to do some more reading.
Hat's off to Mr. Tartarchenko for some truly fantastic animation! Man, that looked great.
Thank you)
I work at a musuem with specificly the B-29. I really hope to learn alot about the compiter so I can pass that knowledge down!
I've only gotten halfway through the video in this sitting, but I have to say this is one of the most interesting topics you've covered. Maybe it is because it's a mechanical system instead of registers and bits, but the explanation is just so clear and captivating to me. Would definitely love videos on similar topics, maybe the Norden sight? What you mentioned is definitely different from the things I hear about it.
Thanks. I do plan to do at least one video on electromechanical missile guidance systems in the future. Could I do a dedicated video on the Norden bombsight? Honestly, I'll think about it.
@@Alexander-the-okLord Hardthrasher’s contextual (ahem) thrashing of the Norden sight was great but an engineering approach to how it was supposed to work followed by why it didn’t would be great. Also, never thought I’d care about analogue electromechanical computers, but this was a real eye opener. I had a vague understanding that the B29 programme was ridiculously expensive in its time but never understood why that would be. Now I see one aspect of why. I’d gladly spend a Friday evening listening how the B36’s fire control system worked because that looks like another crazy piece of electro-mech wizardry
So much of history needs to be taught through the lens of "I am not saying this is correct, only that it happened". This topic is fascinating, the context in which it was imagined and applied is another topic, but the technology developed for the task is staggering.
2:56 If UA-cam videos could stop reminding me of "Grave of the Fireflies" that'd be great.
Sorry.
I have a can of the jellies featured in the movie. It has art of the girl carrying the same can of jellies.
I know it's vapid consumerism, but it's a momento mori of the best things in life.
@@Dong_Harvey Relatedly and somewhat tragically, the company who made the candy tins shut down sometime around January last year. Shame, they were pretty tasty
The emotional gut punch I got from even that slight moment of recognition was deeply uncomfortable. One of the best movies I've ever seen. I refuse to watch it more than once. I've tried. Can't get past the opening credits.
@@Alexander-the-ok It really is a fantastic movie. But thinking about it is borderline traumatic.
This is why I subscribe to your channel! You go into incredibly deep detail that often goes right over my head about relatively-unknown subsystems in an otherwise well-known part of history.
I wish there was some sort of game/simulator that could let you take control of these turrets and shoot down virtual targets.
I love "can it run doom" as an alternare form of "turing complete"
This is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The attention to detail is superb, and the explanations are clear for such a complex subject.
Not only this but you addressed a rare point about the ethics of war machines. Asfascinatingg as the technology is we must remember that they were made to kill. The nuance and care you had is commendable.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Imagine what the engineers would say if you told them someone would be building 3d printed demonstrators of their machine like 80 years later lol
"How dare you build my design on a machine that can't even hit a .001" tolerance?"
Thanks, that was amazing!
You’re very welcome!
That intro looks better and was more amazing than most Hollywood movies made today. They should be talking notes from this guy.
Alex- I watch a lot of these sort of technical documentaries and this was probably the best video I've ever watched on UA-cam. Thank you so so much for your research and putting this together. Literally last week I was reading about the P63 which also used the remote turret. I had always known that the B29 used a remote fire control system, and even it took priority over the P 63 and was a reason why not many of them were ever used in theater with that turret. But I realized I didn't know how it worked, and after doing some research I couldn't really find anything like this video. I thought to myself, "man, I would love to see somebody like Alexander the OK make a documentary on this." When I saw this show up in my feed my jaw literally dropped.
Your work is incredible. This video was, I think, your best. I absolutely adore the style and miniature models to show the analog function. I was grinning as you described how your viewers probably know why a differential functions, or how to shoot down a fighter from a B17, because that's exactly me and I love those old sort of informational videos. You perfectly captured that style in an intuitive way with this video. I literally cannot express how much I enjoyed watching this. Your channel has to be my favorite on UA-cam these days. Amazing video and I cannot wait to see your future work on the B36 if you're able to make that. When I finished watching this, I couldn't believe that I'm not supporting your Patreon. This content is better than anything I can pay for from a professional streaming service. You deserve more recognition than I can ever express to you. Thanks again and I look forward to supporting your work in the future :)
Those 3d and Model animations are great!
This is absolutely fascinating. It's a subject I always heard mentioned about the B29 but never explained. And your writing and presentation are flawless.
Absolutely incredible job not just with the cinematic animations, but the combined model and animation explanations also! Those were super helpful in understanding. I think you did a great job imitating the style of those legendary 40s and 50s videos.
I've been looking for a video about this for a long time! As a senior in mechanical engineering, I would say that you are probably the best engineering youtuber when it comes to the detail, accuracy, and presentation. I absolutely love your videos, and I hope you get the subscribers you deserve!!
5:49 perfect statement of what I feel when I study tanks and planes of WW2: it was amazing, it I do not condone it's use
I recently got heavy heavy into submarines being not really mechanically inclined. But damned was I when I started realising the analog computers they had a hundred years ago 😮
@@MCLuviin Yeah bro shit waws absolutely bonkers. i bet more than one briliantly minded guy put their life on a work like that
WOW!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU, FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPERLATIVE EFFORTS, TO EXPLAIN, AND DEMONSTRATE ALL OF THESE AMAZING, TECHNICAL HURDLES, IN GUNSIGHT DEVELOPMENT, IN THESE AIRCRAFT!!!
I cried deeply about the firebombing. I always cry when I think about it in detail. Great video please keep making these. I'll keep watching.
Toughen up soldier.
@@Eric-kn4yn Better to have people who weep over the nature of war than none at all.
Aerospace computer deep dives AND WW2 aviation in one video? Ok, ya got me.
I love the Catalina too; if you haven't seen it, look for the "Landseaire" version of it. Basically someone converted a Catalina into a a flying RV and went around the world with it.
The models and graphics you made help so much to understand, it is clear how much of a high effort video this is and that is greatly appreciated
As a grandson of a B 29 Bombardier who participated in the firebombing of Tokyo and in recon flights pre Korean War, thank you for this video.
I never got to ask my grandpa about his time in service before he passed in 2001.
Your grandpa was a war criminal but he got away with it
Awesome, this will make my friday night so much better!
Your animator is astonishingly good! That's cinema quality work!
This video is by FAR the best I've seen on this topic. You did a very good job not only explaining but also showing. Glad I subbed to this channel. This video was awesome. I loved all the hand made parts. Really shows you have an absolute understanding of the system.
1:12:33 "and they where largely retired after the war"
That is kind of sort of but not really correct. The B29 was retired after the war, yes, the B50 was not. The B50 supose to only be a slight upgrade of the B29, but they ended up pretty much redesigning the whole wing. The fuselage was still mostly intact, that was developed into the C-97 that in turn was developed into the Boeing 377.
Yeah you're correct. I didn't really have time to go into the B-50 but I suppose I hinted at its existence when I said 'the B-29 engine issues weren't resolved until after the war'.
@Alexander-the-ok its one of those complicated things that dont have a clear simple corect answer. But in would say if the spitfire mk1 and mk24 is counted as the same model, sure as h*ck i would also count B29 amd B50
Your disclaimer is spot on. I'm a recently retired USAF Targeting Analyst certified in both nuclear and conventional weaponeering. The only saving grace of the atomic bombs becoming available for use when they did is because the alternative that was developed in case the atomic bomb project failed would have been far, far worse. The fire bombing of Tokyo on 9 March 1945 is considered the deadliest bombing in human history and was more destructive than both of the atomic bombings that happened later. Project X-Ray developed by the US Army Air Force, then later USMC was the go to plan if the Manhattan Project failed. The 330 B-29s over Tokyo each carried ≈ 1,200 M-69 incendiary bomblets that generated 400 fires per aircraft. The new bomb that would have been loaded 8 per aircraft would have started on average 4,700 fires per B-29. That horrible day in tokyo saw 132,000 fires that killed 100k people. Project X-ray employed in the same manner would have created 1,550,000 fires. Impossible to imagine the casualties from that.
I love the expanse shoutout, I wonder if depressurizing the spacecraft was an independent idea or if the authors picked that up from the b29.
I love seeing these sorts of oldschool computers showcased and explained. I work as a modern computer engineer, making chips for Intel, and it sometimes feels like the same job, just with different mechanisms to use and different linkages to tie them together. They used motors and relays and tubes, I use transistors and capacitors and resistors, but at the end of the day, we're both engineers tricking machines into doing math for us.
I'm very impressed by this animations, they look great - cinema grade stuff :) I had opportunity to see B-29 and it really is wonderful plane
Greetings Alex. You've done an HUGE and excellent job here, Bravo man! Those engineers did a jaw-dropping job designing and making that turret system, it's almost beyond belief. Hats off to them. You gave us a good look into what they did. Excellent video with a finely balanced perspective. Many thanks and best wishes for your projects coming up!
Please make a video on the B-36. I absolutely love that aircraft. Just completely ridiculous
Your use of hand-moved models against a dark background is delightfully simple - and effective.
Your printed and machined plastic examples are complex and simple at the same time. Simple in the sense that they are transparently comprehensible. I especially like the one for the 5-dot sight. Damn, with the models you build (and figure out how to build) and the research you put an incredible amount of work into this video. And with good result, I actually understand this complex system. Great exposition, too.
if you want to demo the syncros, you can use a couple of car alternators! take off the regulator, apply AC to the field windings with a variac, and connect each of the three phases to the corresponding phase on the other alternator. Super fun demo!
Might work with stepper-motors too. Just wire them up Coil 1 to Coil 1, Coil 2 to Coil 2, ...
Thanks!
You’re very welcome
What a machine! Im excited!
Fascinating! Thank you for taking the time putting this historical information on the web. Please keep-up with this kind of content. Efforts like this make learning about this information accessible to the world and future generations. Thank you
Apparently The firebombing of Japan, was the only feasible way to destroy the Decentralized, low density manufacturing that prevented identifying and targeting factories like in Germany. I'm not sure but i think that was already a feature of there industry that they then doubled down on when the island started to come under attack.
The Japanese still have distributed small workshops feeding parts to major manufacturers. It’s a feature of Japanese industry historically.
It’s rarely mentioned that because of *Unit 731* and their holocaust level atrocities, Japan was 2 weeks away from a biological warfare attack on San Diego with billions of bubonic plague infected fleas. And worse. I’m just glad this video takes a step back and tries to have an open discussion on the topic not sterilize it with revisionist history
im only halfway through but this is already amazing. The physical models really make the concepts so much easier to understand, although i think someone needs to get you a cordless drill for christmas so you dont have to rotate all the parts by hand 😂
oh I tried that, everything just shook around a ton.
I'll be using more physical models in the future so will work on my methods.
This was excellent in all regards! I am in awe of the commitment you show making this video. Truly inspiring! Many, many thanks.
This was such a balanced take it made me sub
Finally a good fucking video on the currently nearly lost art of mechanical computers, that shit is gona be making a come back at some point
Fellow Catalina fan! I love em, like flying campervans. Complete with "galley" and kettle to boil a cuppa. What more could one want?
How do this guy have only 98k subs?? Awsome video, with a ton of work into it and with detailed, quality information.
59:14 Your upper bound here is quite a bit lower than it should be. The reason is that the document you're using as a source has a third category, "Other Causes." While this includes losses as a result of mechanical failure, it also covers those for which the reason is not known for certain, i.e. bombers that never returned to base but were not observed going down by the rest of the formation. This likely includes a significant number of B-29s that fell out of contact with their formation for one reason or another, and were subsequently shot down by fighters. To further the point, it seems that Japanese historians have managed to cross-reference a number of these "Other Causes" with kill claims from their own sources.
On that note, I'd also take the kill claims of the B-29s with a significant grain of salt, even if they are backed by gun cameras. The Germans (to use an example I'm familiar with) made quite heavy use of gun cameras, too, but the claims of their pilots are often found to be inflated by 50 or even 100%. Unfortunately I haven't come across any good sources on fighter losses from the Japanese side that can be used to cross-reference, and even with them it's a very tedious task, so the actual numbers will likely remain up in the air for the time being.
IIRC B-29 gunners claimed to shot down 27 MiG-15's throught their Korean deployment, when they at best got 2 (which may actually not match claims made by gunners, funnily enough).
Fantastic effort in explaining & producing all the 3d printed tools. Surely a massive time consuming labour of love.
The animation is insane wtf
Edit:
Don't open the read more
Edit:
To your point
I am Indonesian, one of the countries that was briefly colonized by imperial Japan
people in the 1940s described being under japan was worse than the 350 years under the Dutch
Not much was documented in such a brief time, but the attrocities were.
Japan till this day deny it's role in WWII and all the horrid things it has done.
Was the level of destruction on Japanese populous centers was justified?
Even I cannot answer that.
So I don't understand why people are so easy to say "it's deserved/justified" when many of the deaths that happened was civilians,
My country's civilians were conscripted, enslaved, 🍇ed, and every vile thing between hell and earth.
Yet even I cannot wholeheartedly say,
"Eye for an eye"
I do not support indiscriminate bombings of civilian centers, even if their country has done horrible thing and even if they'd do horrible things for said country.
They were doing this in the 40's.... This is brilliant. That's why, when I see grainy footage of compact shapes moving quickly, it's these blokes. Not aliens.
If the Internet, which is always true, is to be believed, development of the B-29 cost as much or more than the Manhattan project. Given the complexities of the fire control of the turrets, i wouldn't be surprised if it's true.
Also, if i remember correctly, the commemorative B-29s still flying have had their turbochargers removed and the cabin pressurization disabled. This severely nerfs their performance but considerably saves on wear and tear. This is a worthwhile trade when you're trying to keep 80 year old airframes in one piece and their engines running without spare parts infrastructure. And doing it on donations alone. For reference, a B-29 has around 328 spark plugs and they all need to be changed about every 100 hours of running.
Yes it is true, it cost considerably more than the Manhatten project.
I knew Doc and Fifi aren't flown above 10000ft so they don't have to pressurise the cabins. I didn't know the turbochargers were removed though, it makes sense but I'd have never thought of that.
@@Alexander-the-okManhattan project just under 2 billion b-29 3 billion
I talked with a member of the Fifi team about two months ago.
Their engines dont just have the turbochargers removed. They are for the most part completly new engines. They perform about the same as the original 3350's, as long as not at high altitudes, but they are much easier to fix and much more reliable.
The intro animation was great and I really appreciate your opening disclaimer. The technology is certainly fascinating, but I think a lot of people are all too willing to ignore what purpose it ultimately served.
On the topic of mechanical computers/control units, I would personally really be interested in a deep dive similar to this into the control unit of the BMW 801 or Jumo 213 engines fitted to Fw 190s.
There does not seem to be a whole lot of readily available information on what to my knowledge amounts to the first mass deployed automated engine control units and you really have a knack for making topics like these interesting and digestible.
a realy good one
I want to se that intro at 30s now even more
It's genuinely the best animation Artem has done for me so far.
It's amazing how they got this technology developed, 'tested' and calibrated fast enough for it to still be of use in the war at all. I'm a design engineer, but to me it's almost equally amazing how you and especially Curious Marc, etc get your heads around this ancient, obsolete technology worked from whatever documentation still exists. Awesome work!
7:29 the word computer imho clearly contains the letter „t“ 😂
Your introduction was well measured and well contextualised. In truth, the computerised fire-control systems on B-29s were a truly astonishing marvel, when I first came to trip onto them. Perhaps an additional comment is warranted from me? The cost of developing the B=29 bomber was twice that of the entire Manhattan Project. $4 billion for the B=29 and only (?) $2 Billion for the Atom-Bomb. This makes total strategic sense, as a reliable delivery system was needed for nuclear weapons, once they were in serial production. It is (I still believe, a good thing that the Americans realised the first A-Bomb) very important that the A-Bomb was an effective foil against the Soviets at that time. One is still left wondering about the geopolitical consequences of following general Patton's dictum, of prolonging the fighting of WWII, to drive the USSR out of Eastern Europe, and thus obviating much of the mess, which devolved into the 70-year Cold War? Albeit, the Americans had certainly had a gut full of the fighting, and this would have been doubly the case with Britain and the Commonwealth. I would hold that the allied leaders meeting in Potsdam, Truman should have made more of a song and dance about the immenence of US power following the war's end, to Stalin. Thereby placing him onto his back foot, and pushed him into more favourable terms with the slicing of the pie, which Europe had, by then, become. For, as we now know, the Cold War inflicted the most heinous of crimes against enormous swaths of the world's people.
Solzinytzen spoke of the big lie, which everyone needed to participate in, for communism to succeed even marginally.
Love the A10 jab, every little bit counts!
But the bit gun it goes bzzzzzt how can that not make it the greatest plane ever?
Amazing video - excellent work on those models! Thanks for putting all the work in!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes. Survivorship bias is the main source of "they don't make them like they used to". For most products, the reason why people don't make them like that is because THEY LEARNED FROM THEIR MISTAKES. The ones that survive are the ones that can't be made any better for whatever reason. Or they they **can** be made "better" but the oldies that survived have some particular superior quality/qualities.
I sell auto parts to the public. I hear "they don't make them like they used too" a lot.
In fairness, the rise of serializing parts to the onboard computer & encasing all fuses, capacitors, circuit boards, & etc in plastic behind proprietary connectors is a valid example of “they don’t make them like they used to.”
Gone are the days of going to a junkyard and pulling the perfectly working parts off another car to fix yours. You’d have to then go to an approved shop and hope they paid the thousands to get the “reprogramming” tool & pay hundreds for the “service.”
See also: nearly everything that’s driving the insanely high EV write-off rate.
Autoparts are absoloutly not made like they used to. I quite often have to go threw 2-3 new parts before getting one that works
@@Past10Performance have you heard of survivorship bias? or confirmation bias?
@@superdupergrover9857 yes but I don't see how it applies when I am old enough to rember when you bought a cps and it worked the first time around.
I'm old enough to remember cars in the 70s and 80s and am perfectly happy that cars aren't "made like they used to." I also remember pulling to a full service pump to please "add oil and check the gas."
Sure there are dome nice 40 year old vehicles on the road, but how many of those are K-cars? Survivorship bias indeed.
Very good vlog, also good statement on the perspective of the use of bombing.
My late father was in the RN (in Burma upon the surrender of the Japanese and releasing allied POW’s )
Although I fully understand your statement you have to understand the inhuman treatment of allied POW’s and the use by the Japanese of bio-chemical warfare upon both civilians and allied POW’s (over 2.5 million Chinese killed by the release of plague) the Japanese never apologised. This influence generations attitude on this subject.
I agree the Mosquito was a fantastic aircraft and was built against all odds as the ministry of aircraft production tried repeatedly to close it down.
Both the Germans and the US tried to emulate it, the Germans had some very advanced aircraft designs but failed to focus on one and build any in sufficient numbers ie ME262
Again great informative vlog - learnt a lot.
Thanks.
My grandfather was never sent to the front lines, but many of his friends ended up in Burma. He NEVER forgave the Japanese, it was really sad. 60 years later and we just could not convince him what he referred to as ‘Japan’ no longer existed.
That is why I don’t make sweeping statements about the Allied bombing being ‘unjustified’. In fact, that’s the reason I briefly tore down some of the alternatives onscreen. I wasnt there, I dont get to make moral judgements.
@@Alexander-the-ok I agree with you Alex.And I found your intro finely balanced and appropriate. I think we have to say "It is what it is". Fine-sounding moral judgements are too easy to come by, and have little to no value.
Anyone getting any weird audio glitches?
Otherwise, fantastic video! I find these analogue systems fascinating
Lots
Same
@@tylerrose7583 I had to stop watching, interrupted the video too much.
Ok a few viewers have commented this. I am not getting them. Could you give me a timestamp for one? This is clearly a youtube issue.
@@Alexander-the-okit was around the 15-20 minute mark, although the issue disappeared once I was not viewing this video as a premier.
Goddamn what video this is! Hate that it took so long for the subject to get real justice and the work in recreating the components was *chefs kiss*
Isn't a computer just, you know, a thing that computes? It may not be an all-purpose computer but if it does calculation it is a computer nonetheless. At least that is how I think about it. I'm okay with a calculator and a sliderule to both be computers.
Only 1/3 of the way through this one at time of writing, but, man, Alex, your video quality keeps improving.
I also want to say that I really appreciate the level of tact you bring to difficult subjects. It can be simultaneously true that the acts of WW2 were atrocities, and that the engineering around them is absolutely fascinating and we can learn a lot from them. I really appreciate your willingness to tackle that dichotomy right from the outset.
Ah, but you forget, in a Total war, everybody is a combatant.
Its easy to say when you're an ocean away.
@ yeah and if war came here I and everyone I know would implicitly be a conbatant
A truly wonderful video on such a beautiful aircraft.
I really admire how above and beyond you went with the modeling in this.
Can’t wait for the B-36 video!
0:24 So Me 264? ;-P
what an amazing documentary. The analog approach to display how things worked, is fantastic. Thanks a lot.