Image of the Air Force wings with the museum name underneath

Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week
FREE Admission & Parking

B-29 Walk-through Fuselage

Note: Visitors are permitted to walk through this aircraft.

Command Decision was a 28th Bomb Squadron, 19th Bomb Group B-29 that became famous for shooting down five MiG-15s, unofficially making it a bomber "ace." It was named after a popular 1948 film about the difficult decisions and heavy casualties of bomber operations over Europe in World War II.

This walk-through B-29 fuselage is painted to represent the Command Decision.

Command Decision Sighting Station
The B-29's complex, revolutionary defensive gunnery system featured five sighting stations which could selectively fire the four remote gun turrets and the manned tail turret. The sighting station on display was used on the B-29 Superfortress Command Decision.

The B-29 gunnery system had many advantages over the manned turrets used on nearly all bombers before the B-29. For instance, computers and gyros automatically calculated factors like bullet drop, speed of the B-29, speed of the target, etc. Most importantly, one gunner could aim and fire multiple turrets against a single target.

Click here to return to the Korean War Gallery or here to return to the Strategic Bombing Overview.

Find Out More
Line
Related Fact Sheets
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis
Lectures
Lt. Col. (Ret.) George A. Larson: "B-29s and the Korean War" (00:47:13)
Line