Did you know? In TAHGC's "Air Force/Dauntless" games, an unloaded B-29 is credited with four power factors at sea level (0-4.9 altitude band). According to the rules, an aircraft gains one MP in speed per power factor above maneuver costs. Given no maneuvering, our B-29 would accelerate by four MP in one game turn. That's 200 mph in 10 seconds (or 29.3 ft/sec squared). That's twice the acceleration allowed to a P51D in the same game. Sound fishy? I decided to calculate what it takes to do that. Assume the B-29 accelerates from speed 3 to speed 7 (15(kmph to 350mph) in 10 seconds. According to my sources, an unloaded B-29 weighs in at 121,100 lbs and has about 6500 lbs. of drag at 150mph (based on a total drag coefficient of .0649). To accelerate 121,100 lbs of anything at 29.3 ft/sec-sec with that drag requires 110,350 lbs. of excess thrust or in this case 116,850 lbs of thrust. (for comparison, an F- 14A only has 41,800lbs of thrust available to it, a Boeing 727 only has 45,000 lbs.). To have that much thrust, the B-29's four radial engines would have to provide a total of 46,735HP or 11,685HP each. That's some mighty big engine power don't you think! Hope you get the same laugh out of this I did! Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 19 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com