B-29 Museum The B-29 Museum & All Veterans Memorial Complex in Pratt, Kansas honors and remembers the B-29 crews which trained at Pratt Army Airfield during World War II, as well those who served at other Kansas B-29 bases. The complex on the grounds of Pratt Regional Airport also has the B-29 All Veterans Memorial and the Pratt Army Airfield historic walk. There is a lot to be seen outside from dawn to dusk, but any W.W.II Aviation enthusiast will want to spend and hour or two at the museum as well. The museum is in the Parachute Building which was completed in 1943 for inspecting, packing, and repairing parachutes for B-29 crews that were to be trained to fly B-29s at Pratt Army Airfield by a platoon of seven women and one man. The building has two sections, a 40 foot tall parachute loft and a short, gabled, one story parachute packing area which combined allowed drying, inspections, cleaning and reassembling of parachutes. Exhibits of particular interest include tributes to individual aviators from the region and the tributes to the B-29 Superfortress wings which operated at Pratt, Great Bend, Herington, Salina, Topeka, Victoria and Wichita, Kansas. The aircraft were manufactured at Boeing's Wichita. Depending on which street you take to enter the complex, the first thing which you see may be the impressive display of three air force planes, with the All Veterans Memorial behind them. Several structures from Pratt Army Airfield are still present and there is a one mile Pratt Army Air Field Historical Walk which will take you past them. There are signs describing how they were used as well as telling about some of the buildings which are no longer present. One place that is still present is the Norden Bombsight Vaults where the top secret Norden bombsights used for training were secured. Another is one of the five Sub-Depot Hangers. This was the largest and could house two B-29s at once, nose to tail and was used for modification and major repair. From the outside of the museum, in the distance you can see the Pratt Army Air Field Tetrahedron which pointed in the direction the wind came from. It is no longer used.
B-29 Museum
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