Boeing submitted a proposal for the B-29 Superfortress to the US Army in 1940, just before the country joined the fray of WWII. The long-range, heavy duty bomber was outfitted with the very latest tech, including a pressurized cabin and aft crew area, connected by a long tube over the bomb bays. In one of the first uses of computers on a plane, it had remote control weaponry, so one gunner and fire control officer could direct four machine gun turrets.

In 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, changing the course of world history.