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captain_perl | 7 years ago

The B-29 was the first nuclear strategic bomber. They were decommissioned in 1960.

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dingaling|7 years ago

The B-29 wasn't strategic in terms of Cold War capability against the USSR, in fact SAC had downgraded it to 'medium bomber' in classification.

SAC did modify a few dozen with inflight refueling as the B-29MR but that required stripping off nearly all defensive armament and giving over half of the bomb capacity to fuel tanks. And even then the missions would be one-way: http://b-29.org/charlie/charlie1.html

The developed B-50 was semi-strategic and had inflight refuelling capability from the outset.