Boeing's untested superbomber lifts off from Seattle; the Army has already ordered hundreds

Boeing Field, Seattle, September 21, 1942: a four-engine bomber unlike anything the Army Air Forces had flown before lifted off with test pilot Edmund T. "Eddie" Allen at the controls and Al Reed beside him as co-pilot. The Army had ordered the plane into quantity production before this first flight ever happened, betting on wind-tunnel data before the plane had ever left the ground. It flew. The B-29 program, which would become the costliest weapons effort of the war, now had a working prototype behind those orders…