The B-29 Superfortress bomber was the single most complicated and expensive weapon produced by the United States during World War II. Nearly 4,000 B-29s were built for combat in the Pacific theater, including the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Envisioned in the late 1930s as a way of demolishing the military infrastructure behind enemy lines, the Superfortress was at first resisted by the reluctant, isolationist Congress of the late 1930s. Jacob Vander Meulen describes the efforts of Henry "Hap" Arnold and others to launch the project via a process now called "concurrency," in which production is set up while the product is still on the drawing boards. He describes the technical and financial gambles on the part of manufacturers and, using photographs and diagrams, he illustrates the far-reaching changes the B-29 plants brought to their communities, as Depression-era unemployment gave way to labor shortages and as farm workers and women entered U.S. factories for the first time.

Origins of the B-29 -- Arranging B-29 production -- Changes and painful delays -- Why Wichita? -- Renton and Seattle : "the big change" -- Omaha -- Marietta, Georgia -- Who built the engines?