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The first production B-29 was completed at the new Boeing plant in Wichita in July of 1943. By the end of the following month, 14 Superfortresses had rolled off the assembly lines. The new bomber had moved from conception to production in an unprecedented amount of time but suffered many early problems as a result. By the following January, only 97 B-29's had been built and of those 16 were flyable. The other aircraft required some 50 modifications each to be combat ready. Eventually, the productive capacity of Boeing and a great many sub-contractors come on line and production began to kick up. On March 26, 1944 the first II plane contingent of combat ready B-29 left on a 11,530 mile journey from their factory in Kansas bound for India. Production facilities would spread throughout the U.S. from component plants to full scale assembly plants. By the end of the war with Japan only 17 months away, another 3,752 B-29's would be delivered for use in the Pacific theater of war.
In the end, the B-29 Superfortress would be one of the greatest industrial feats of modern warfare. Their production itself was revolutionary, using 55,00 numbered parts, thousands of miles of electrical wiring, and more than 1,000,000 rivets each, the B-29 was a mechanical masterpiece. Constructed in pieces around the country, the finished bombers came together on the most advanced assembly lines to date. The "3 Billion Dollar Gamble" was now ready to become the "3 Billion Dollar Miracle".
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