The following year, Tibbets was selected to form what would eventually be the 509th Composite Group. It was so beset with developmental problems that by 1943, when Tibbets showed up in Wichita to help sort out the airplane’s shortcomings, there was some doubt that the airplane would be combat ready in time to have an impact on the war. Tibbets, whose arc through history put him at the point of two of the war’s biggest projects-the bomb and the bomber that would deliver it.Although it’s not commonly known, the B-29 was actually said to be a larger undertaking than the Manhattan Project, at least in terms of total dollars spent. And that leads inevitably to the B-29 Superfortress and Paul W. I have always been fascinated by World War II and especially by the history of the Manhattan Project.
