The B-29 Superfortress usually steals the spotlight. If you've ever watched a History Channel documentary or played a flight sim, you know the B-29 as the silver beast that ended World War II. But there was another one. A backup plan that actually made it to the finish line, albeit barely. The B-32 Dominator is honestly one of the weirdest footnotes in aviation history because it represents a massive industrial insurance policy that almost nobody remembers.
It was fast. It was heavy. It was also, in many ways, a complete mess during development.
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) didn't want to put all their eggs in the Boeing basket. That’s the crux of it. Back in 1940, when the "Very Heavy Bomber" program kicked off, the military was terrified that the complex B-29 would fail. So, they asked Consolidated—the folks who built the legendary B-24 Liberator—to build a competitor. That competitor became the B-32 Dominator.
A Design Born from Panic
Imagine being told to build a world-class bomber but knowing you're only the "Plan B." That was the vibe at Consolidated’s San Diego and Fort Worth plants. The original specs for the B-32 Dominator were ambitious, aiming for a pressurized cabin and remote-controlled gun turrets, just like the B-29.
But things went sideways fast.
Consolidated struggled with the pressurization systems. Leakage was a constant nightmare. The remote-controlled turrets? Those were a disaster in early testing. Eventually, the USAAF got fed up. They told Consolidated to ditch the fancy tech and just build a high-altitude, heavy-hitting bomber using "dumb" technology. The result was a plane that looked like a B-24 on steroids, featuring a massive single vertical tail that made it look like a shark cruising through the clouds.
The Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines were the heart of the beast. These were the same engines used in the B-29, and they were notoriously prone to catching fire. It’s kinda terrifying when you think about it. Test pilots were essentially flying massive fuel tanks powered by engines that liked to spontaneously combust.
The B-32 Dominator vs. The B-29 Superfortress
You’ve gotta wonder why we even needed both.
The B-29 was the high-tech, sleek, pressurized future of warfare. The B-32 ended up being the rugged, unpressurized, manual alternative. If the B-29 was a Tesla, the B-32 was an old-school diesel truck with a turbocharger slapped on it.
Performance-wise, they weren't that far apart. The B-32 Dominator could hit about 357 mph. That's moving. It had a service ceiling of 30,000 feet, which was respectable, though it couldn't quite match the B-29's ability to cruise comfortably above the reach of most Japanese interceptors.
One major difference was the crew experience. In a B-29, you could fly in your shirtsleeves because the cabin was pressurized. In a B-32? You were wearing a bulky, heated flight suit and breathing through an oxygen mask for hours on end. It was grueling work. The B-32 used a Davis wing, which was thin and efficient for long-range flight, but it made the plane a bit of a handful to land.
Combat Records and the Final Casualties
By the time the B-32 actually reached the Pacific in the summer of 1945, the war was basically over.
Only a handful of missions were ever flown. The 312th Bombardment Group, known as the "Roarin' 20's," was the only unit to take the B-32 Dominator into combat. They operated out of Luzon in the Philippines and later Okinawa. Most of their missions were photo reconnaissance or airfield suppression.
But here is the detail that usually shocks people: the B-32 was involved in the very last air combat of World War II.
It happened on August 18, 1945. Japan had already announced its intent to surrender three days earlier. However, a pair of B-32s on a reconnaissance mission over Tokyo were jumped by Japanese fighters, including A6M5 Zeros and N1K2-J Shidens. During the skirmish, Sergeant Anthony Marchione, a photographer's assistant, was mortally wounded.
He became the last American airman to die in combat during the war.
It’s a heavy legacy for a plane that most people have never heard of. While the world was celebrating peace, the crew of a B-32 was fighting for their lives over a country that had technically already quit.
Why the Dominator Disappeared
So, why didn't the B-32 stick around like the B-29 or the B-36?
- Redundancy: Once the B-29 proved it could work, the B-32 was redundant.
- Maintenance: Keeping two different sets of parts for two different very heavy bombers was a logistical nightmare.
- The Jet Age: Aviation was moving too fast. By 1946, the military was already looking at jet propulsion.
- Scrapping: Almost every single B-32 was sent to the scrap heap immediately after the war.
Out of the 118 airframes built, zero remain today.
Not one.
If you want to see a B-32 Dominator, you’re stuck looking at grainy black-and-white photos or diving into the archives of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. There are a few fragments here and there—a wing tip in a private collection, maybe some cockpit instruments—but the "Plan B" bomber was effectively erased from the physical world.
Technical Nuances and Design Flaws
The B-32 wasn't just a "worse" B-29. It had some interesting engineering. It used reversible-pitch propellers, which was a huge deal back then. It allowed the massive plane to back up on the ground and helped shorten landing runs on the short, coral-dust runways of the Pacific islands.
But the development delays were the real killer.
The first prototype crashed during takeoff in 1943, killing the crew. The second prototype had such bad stability issues that they had to completely redesign the tail. If you look at early drawings, the B-32 had a twin-tail setup like the B-24. It looked cool, but it was aerodynamically unstable at the speeds the USAAF wanted. The switch to the massive B-29-style single tail fixed the stability but added more weight and delayed production even further.
By the time Consolidated sorted out the "Terminator" (the early nickname before they settled on Dominator), the B-29 was already dropping firebombs on Japanese cities.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs and Researchers
If you're researching the B-32 Dominator, you shouldn't just look at it as a failed plane. Look at it as a study in "Industrial Insurance." The US government spent millions on this project specifically because they didn't trust the B-29's complexity.
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- Visit the Archives: Since no physical planes exist, your best bet is the San Diego Air & Space Museum. They hold many of the original Consolidated-Vultee records.
- Study the 312th Bomb Group: Their unit histories provide the only first-hand accounts of what it was like to actually fight in this plane. Look for memoirs from pilots like Lt. Col. Bruce Alshier.
- Compare Engine Reliability: Researching the R-3350 engine's development on the B-32 versus the B-29 shows how different cooling baffle designs affected engine life. It's a fascinating deep dive into thermodynamics.
- Wreck Hunting: There are rumored to be B-32 wrecks in remote parts of the Pacific, though none have been recovered or fully surveyed for museum display.
The B-32 Dominator reminds us that history is often written by the winners—and in the world of aviation, the "winner" is the plane that gets the better PR. The B-29 got the glory, but the B-32 was the gritty, unpolished backup that stood ready to take over if the Superfortress had faltered. It was a victim of timing, technology, and the sheer speed of 1940s innovation.