By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: On August 20, 1944, four American B-29’s built by Boeing were forced to make an emergency landing in far eastern Russia. One plane crash landed at Khabarovsk and the other three safely landed near Vladivostok. The crews of the three intact fighter planes thought that they would be allowed to refuel and fly out of Soviet territory, but they were wrong. Stalin had been asking Roosevelt to give the Soviets some B-29’s under the Lend-Lease program, but FDR refused ‘Uncle Joe’s’ request. The US was supplying its cunning and unreliable ally with almost everything in World War II from boots to bullets to lesser planes—but no B-29’s. The B-29 was a super fortress heavy bomber, one of the most aesthetically beautiful airplanes ever designed and built. It incorporated every state-of-the-art technology known to the aeronautical industry at the time, including cabin pressure and an analog computer-controlled fire alarm system. It
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