My interest in Superfortress naming arises from a familial link with the most famous (or second most famous, depending on how you rank them) B-29 mission of all. This is somewhat unusual since other bombers of the day, including the B-17 and B-24, were less likely to carry an individual name (although a great many did, Memphis Belle being perhaps the most famous example among many, many thousands). Virtually all combat B-29s had distinctive names, bestowed upon them by their crews. After all, attaching a name to a killing machine is merely an attempt to humanize the brutality of war, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s of benefit to our collective psyche since the airplanes in question were capable of raining such unfathomable destruction from above. It was an airplane dubbed “Superfortress.” Yet many of the most famous Boeing B-29 bombers that plied the skies during the latter days of World War II carried strangely meek-sounding individual names.
