B-29: spare engine ferry ?

[Nik]

First, my apologies: Recent eye-surgery has temporarily hobbled my Google_Fu...
( APHont and Ctrl-Scroll zoom for the win...)

IIRC, US sent but one (1) B-29 to UK to astonish and, yes, boost morale...

If deployed in numbers, such as for Silver-plate / Saddletree delivery, some spares might have gone along...

Via US / Gander / Iceland's 'Great Circle' ??
Not as scary as 'Hauling over the Hump', but a fair step...

Given B_29 could fit a ferry-tank in one bay and a sub-critical 'Little Boy' gun-type device in other, could eg 'Camera' aircraft have similarly ferried an entire spare engine in addition to essential, but ammo-box sized 'pit' and '2nd part' ??

I'm not interested in 'Fat Man' plutonium devices, given their implosion woes could so-easily have run delivery very, very late...
Thank you.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

I believe that particular B-29 was also sent to the UK to give the Germans the impression that the new bomber would soon be deployed there. Compared to the B-17 and B-24 it would be flying higher and faster and be that much harder for the Luftwaffe to intercept and out of range of all but the heaviest German AAA. I don't know how much impact this display actually had on the Germans, maybe not much in terms of morale, but some appreciable effort was put into a new generation of fighters like the Ta-152 intended to counter the B-29.

I'm not sure about the viability of getting those items there within the B-29, but I wouldn't rule out the idea.

 

[NMaude]

I believe that particular B-29 was also sent to the UK to give the Germans the impression that the new bomber would soon be deployed there.

Correct, it was one of the YB-29A preproduction aircraft.

 

[Nik]

The H/N Nuke raids from Pacific base are famous, but I hadn't realised that B_29s had been raiding Japan from base(s) in China, albeit to 'modest' effect.

Or they'd had to haul so much materiel 'Over the Hump'...

As yet, I've not found extensive description of what they took...

Sorry, my eyes are likely to remain 'seriously wonky' until mid-Summer at earliest...

 

[EwenS]

The H/N Nuke raids from Pacific base are famous, but I hadn't realised that B_29s had been raiding Japan from base(s) in China, albeit to 'modest' effect.

Or they'd had to haul so much materiel 'Over the Hump'...

As yet, I've not found extensive description of what they took...

Sorry, my eyes are likely to remain 'seriously wonky' until mid-Summer at earliest...

"As Gen.LeMay recalled after the war:

"When ordered to fly a mission out of China, we had to make seven trips with a B-29 and off-load all the gas we could, leaving only enough to get back to India. On the eighth trip we would transport a load of bombs,top off with gas in China, and go drop them on Japan if the weather was right. Then we'd start the process all overagain. So the logistical situation was hopeless in China."

Operation Matterhorn - China-Burma-India Theater of World War II

Edit:- there was also a large number of C-109 flying gas tankers (converted B-24) hauling avgas over the Hump.

Consolidated C-109

 

[Archibald]

Operation Matterhorn

Something had to be done to start bombing Japan, but overall it was a costly failure at many levels...