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If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably heard a lot of hype about how the mayor of Washington D.C. supposedly wants to tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. That’s not even remotely true. Right-wing media outlets and conservative pundits have been blatantly distorting the truth and blowing things totally out of proportion.Here’s what actually happened: Muriel E. Bowser, the mayor of Washington D.C., commissioned a research committee known as the District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions Working Group to come up with a list of federal monuments in the district that they think the government should “remove, relocate, or contextualize.”The committee itself has no power to actually do anything to any of the monuments on its list. All it has the power to do is make recommendations. Furthermore, when it comes to structures like the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, it’s pretty clear that the committee isn’t advocating for the government to just tear them down; what they’re probably thinking of is something more along the lines of putting up a sign noting some of the less-than-savory aspects of Washington and Jefferson’s lives. That’s what “contextualize” means.Unfortunately, Fox News and other conservative media outlets are so hellbent on portraying liberals as deranged, frothing-at-the-mouth communist radicals who want to destroy American culture that they’ve seized on this committee’s recommendations of contextualization and spun it into a wildly distorted narrative of “the evil liberals want to tear down all the monuments in D.C.!”A look at the federal monuments on the committee’s listNow that I’ve hopefully cleared up what the list is really about, let’s take a look at some of the actual federal monuments that are on the list, the people they are supposed to honor, and why these historical figures might be seen as problematic.Below is an image of the list of federal monuments that the mayor’s committee recommends removing, relocating, or contextualizing. We’ll go through each historical figure with a monument on the list one-by-one in the order that they are mentioned and talk about some of the things these historical figures did.What a monument representsBefore we do that, though, let’s talk about what monuments are actually for. A lot of conservatives will try to insist that making any kind of changes to any kind of historical monument would be “erasing history.” This is not an accurate way of thinking about it, however.As I discuss in this article about Confederate monuments from November 2019, the purpose of a monument is not to remember history. We remember history by writing about it in books and teaching our children about it in schools. The purpose of a monument is to glorify someone.Being an important historical figure does not automatically mean that someone deserves a monument. For instance, Adolf Hitler was a very significant figure in the history of twentieth-century Germany, but there are very good reasons why there aren’t colossal marble statues of him all over Germany today.It’s also important to remember that human beings are complicated. No person is completely good or completely evil and it is possible for a person to have done both great things and terrible things. (Even Hitler was—as bizarre as it may sound—very concerned about animal rights.) This is especially important to realize when talking about people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who did some genuinely great things, but also committed atrocities.ABOVE: Photograph of Adolf Hitler. Hitler is a very significant historical figure, but there are some very good reasons why people in Germany today aren’t building monuments to him.Christopher ColumbusNow, with that out of the way, let’s talk about the mayor’s committee’s list. Christopher Columbus (lived 1451 – 1506) is the first figure who is mentioned on it. This makes a lot of sense, considering that Columbus was, quite frankly, a horrible person. I wrote an entire article two years ago about why we should not honor him, but I’ll give some of the highlights here.Today, Christopher Columbus is popularly believed to have been first to propose that the earth is spherical and to have “discovered” the Americas. Neither of these things are true. In reality, by the time Columbus was born, the sphericity of the earth had already been common knowledge in Europe for around two thousand years.The whole story about Columbus being laughed at by scholars for thinking the earth is a sphere is totally made up; it was popularized by the American writer Washington Irving through his pseudo-biography of Columbus titled A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which was published in 1828.Likewise, Columbus didn’t discover the Americas; there were at least fifty million people living in the Americas when he arrived and their ancestors had been living there for well over ten thousand years. It’s really hard to “discover” a place when there are already millions of people living there.Columbus wasn’t even the first European to visit the Americas; the Norse founded a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in what is now Newfoundland in the late tenth or early eleventh century—roughly 400 years before Columbus was even born.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a modern reconstruction of a medieval Norse sodhouse at the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement in NewfoundlandThus, Columbus didn’t actually do any of the things he has traditionally been honored for. He did, however, brutally subjugate the native Arawak people of the Caribbean and force thousands of them into slavery. To give you an idea of the kind of conditions they faced, Michele da Cuneo, a childhood friend of Columbus who accompanied him on his second voyage, gives the following description in a letter dated to 28 October 1495 of how Columbus gave him a native woman to use as a sex slave:“While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral [i.e. Columbus] gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.”Not only did Columbus force native people into slavery, but, during his time as governor of the island of Hispaniola, he routinely used maiming, mutilation, and enslavement as punishments for even the most minor of offenses. Columbus was so brutal that his own Spanish subjects rebelled and, in 1500, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain actually removed him from his position as governor and had him and his brothers forcibly brought back to Spain.They instated a man named Francisco de Bobadilla as Columbus’s successor as the governor of the colony of Hispaniola. Francisco conducted an investigation into Columbus’s abuses of power during his time as governor and produced a forty-eight-page report on the subject, which contains eyewitness testimony from twenty-three of Columbus’s own Spanish subjects.According to the report, when a man stole a piece of corn, Columbus had the man’s nose and ears sliced off and sold him into slavery. When a woman insinuated that Columbus was of low birth, his brother Bartolomeo had her paraded through the streets naked and then had her tongue cut out. Christopher reportedly praised Bartolomeo for “defending the family.” When the native subjects rebelled against him, the report says that Columbus brutally massacred them and had their bloody, dismembered corpses paraded through the streets to discourage future revolts.ABOVE: Nineteenth-century imaginative illustration of Francisco de Bobadilla arresting Christopher Columbus for his tyrannical misrule over HispaniolaFrancisco de Bobadilla eliminated the gold tax on the natives and governed Hispaniola for a relatively peaceful two years. His elimination of the gold tax, however, displeased the Spanish monarchs, so they removed him and replaced him with Nicolás de Ovando, who reinstated Columbus’s policies and was, if anything, even more brutal than Columbus himself. Later governors of the island, including Columbus’s son Diego, followed in his footsteps. As a result of this, within half a century of Columbus’s landing, the native Taíno people of Hispaniola were virtually exterminated.Columbus hasn’t always been revered. During colonial times, people in the English colonies in North America generally regarded the Italian explorer John Cabot (lived c. 1450 – c. 1500), who sailed under the sponsorship of King Henry VII of England, more highly than Columbus. During the American Revolution, however, the colonists became desperate for an explorer-hero who wasn’t English or in any way affiliated with the English crown. They eventually settled on Christopher Columbus. That’s why our nation’s capital is named after him.Columbus’s fame grew throughout the nineteenth century, in part due to Washington Irving’s fake biography of him. In 1882, the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, was founded. In 1893, the city of Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair in honor of the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s supposed “discovery” of the “New World.” It was around this time that people began pushing for Columbus Day to be made a national holiday.In 1912, at the height of Christopher Columbus’s popularity, a marble fountain with a colossal statue of him was erected at Union Station in Washington D.C. Its dedication was celebrated with three days of parades and fireworks. The fountain has stood in the middle of the station ever since, although, in recent years, it has fallen into disrepair and the plumbing is no longer operational.I don’t know exactly what we should do about the fountain. It’s over a century old, it’s a work of art, and it’s included on the National Register of Historic Places, but it glorifies a man who certainly does not deserve to be glorified. The best option might be to remove the parts of the fountain that relate to Columbus and replace them with sculptures commemorating someone else who actually deserves to have a fountain in our nation’s capital.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the colossal statue of Christopher Columbus in the fountain at Union Station in Washington D.C.Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin (lived 1706 – 1790) is revered as the perhaps first truly great American statesman and polymath. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the glass harmonica, the Franklin stove, and the flexible urinary catheter. In 1731, he founded the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1736, he founded the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer fire departments in the English colonies. In 1749, he founded the University of Pennsylvania.Franklin also played a pivotal role during the American Revolution. In June 1776, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence. From 1776 until 1785, he served as the United States’ first ambassador to France, where he played a crucial role in winning the support of the French king. In 1787, he was present at the Constitutional Convention. He is generally regarded as the most influential American politician who never became president.That being said, as I discuss in this previous article from April 2017 about the Founding Fathers’ views on slavery, Benjamin Franklin did own enslaved people. He first became a slaveowner in 1735 when he was only around twenty-nine years old. Over the course of his lifetime, he owned seven slaves in total. He held racist views towards black people throughout most of his life and his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, frequently printed advertisements for slave auctions.As he grew older, though, Franklin began to turn against slavery. By 1781, he had freed all his remaining slaves. In the last few years of his life, he became an outspoken abolitionist. He became the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1787 and, in February of 1790, only two months before his death, he personally wrote a petition to Congress on behalf of the society arguing that slavery needed to be abolished as soon as possible. He letter concludes:“Under these Impressions they [i.e. the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery] earnestly entreat your serious attention to the Subject of Slavery, that you will be pleased to countenance the Restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men [i.e. enslaved black people], who alone, in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage, and who, amidst the general Joy of surrounding Freemen, are groaning in Servile Subjection, that you will devise means for removing this Inconsistency from the Character of the American People, that you will promote mercy and Justice towards this distressed Race, & that you will Step to the very verge of the Powers vested in you for discouraging every Species of Traffick in the Persons of our fellow men.”Personally, I think Franklin redeemed himself on the issue of slavery. That being said, he did own slaves for over forty years and, even as an abolitionist, I’m not sure he ever entirely abandoned his old racist views.In addition to his ownership of slaves, there are other other aspects of Franklin’s personality that are frankly less-than-admirable; for instance, he was a notorious womanizer, party-lover, and hellraiser. As a young man, he frequently visited prostitutes. Some of his surviving letters, especially one titled “Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress” are highly obscene and frankly express a very sexist view of women.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the statue of Benjamin Franklin in Washington D.C.Personally, I think that Benjamin Franklin ultimately did more good than harm. I do, however, think his statue in Washington D.C. should be relocated—not because of anything he did, but rather because of where the statue is currently located.The statue of Benjamin Franklin that now stands in Washington D.C. was first dedicated in 1889. It was moved to its current location outside the Old Post Office Pavilion in 1980. Unfortunately, the Old Post Office Pavilion was leased to a holding company owned by the notorious Donald J. Trump in 2013 and has now been fully converted into the Trump International Hotel of Washington D.C.I don’t think Benjamin Franklin would feel comfortable having his primary statue in the nation’s capital situated directly in front of the entrance to a Trump hotel. In fact, I’m almost wondering if the whole reason why the Franklin statue is on Mayor Bowser’s committee’s list is because of its extremely poor placement.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of people protesting outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. (i.e. the Old Post Office Pavilion) in 2017. The Franklin statue can be seen right outside the entrance to the hotel.Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson (lived 1767 – 1845) gained national fame as a general through his stunning victory over the British army in the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815. He went on to found the modern Democratic Party and serve as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 until 1837. He portrayed himself as a man of the people, standing up for ordinary Americans against big banks and corporations, and as a proponent of radical democracy. The extent to which this portrayal is accurate is debatable.As much as Jackson liked to portray himself as a hero for the “common man,” he was actually extraordinarily wealthy. He lived in a huge mansion on a plantation in Nashville, Tennessee, known as the Hermitage, where he owned roughly two hundred enslaved people. As a direct consequence of him owning hundreds of enslaved people himself, he was fiercely opposed to the abolition of slavery.Jackson’s ownership of slaves is only the beginning of why he is such a problematic figure, though; in 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which instigated the brutal and systematic ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole tribes from the southeastern United States. These peoples had been living there for thousands of years and, at the time Jackson ordered their removal, they were living peacefully for the most part. The only reason for removing them was because the white settlers wanted their land.Tens of thousands of members of the tribes indigenous to the southeastern United States were forced to leave their homes and march through the rain, sleet, and snow to the land west of the Mississippi River that is now the state of Oklahoma. Most of them were only able to bring what they could carry, meaning they had to leave most of their possessions behind. They were forced to travel without adequate food, clothing, or supplies. Thousands of them died along the journey.Alexis de Tocqueville, a left-wing French political thinker who greatly admired the United States, personally witnessed the forced removal of the Choctaw people in 1831 near Memphis Tennessee. He describes his horror at the encounter as follows in his book Democracy in America:“In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung. The Indians were tranquil, but sombre and taciturn. There was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why the Chactas were leaving their country. ‘To be free,’ he answered. I could never get any other reason out of him. One must confess that it is a singular fate that brought us to Memphis to watch the expulsion, one can say the dissolution, of one of the most celebrated and ancient American peoples.”These death marches have become known to history as the “Trail of Tears” and they remain one of the worst atrocities committed by the United States government.ABOVE: The Trail of Tears, painted in 1942 by the American painter Robert LindneuxUnfortunately, many white settlers at the time strongly approved of Andrew Jackson’s brutal policies against the Native Americans. He was regarded as a hero within his own lifetime. Seven years after his death, in 1852, a bronze equestrian statue of him was erected in the center of Lafayette Square in Washington D.C., showing him in military uniform with his horse dramatically rearing back on its hind legs.In recent years, Andrew Jackson has begun to be reevaluated in much the same way that Christopher Columbus has. Personally, I think that Jackson’s legacy is more complicated than Columbus’s, since Jackson did play an important role in shaping our democracy. Nonetheless, on account of his ownership of enslaved people and his ethnic cleansing against the Native Americans, I think he ultimately did more harm than good.I’m not entirely sure what should be done about the statue of him in Lafayette Square, since it is a historic landmark that is well over a century old, but I’m inclined to think that it should be removed from its current location and maybe put in a museum where it can be viewed as a historical artifact rather than a living memorial. At the very least, his statue needs some serious contextualization. Continuing to honor Jackson as a hero is an insult to the black people he enslaved and the Native Americans he forcibly removed.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C.Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson (lived 1743 – 1826) is one of the United States’ most revered Founding Fathers. In 1776, he was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. He was the one who wrote these immortal words:“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”Jefferson dedicated almost his entire adult life to public service. From 1785 to 1789, he served as the United States’ second ambassador to France. From 1790 to 1793, he served as our country’s first Secretary of State. During his time as Secretary of State, he founded the Democratic-Republican Party, the immediate predecessor to today’s Democratic Party. From 1797 to 1801, he served under President John Adams as our country’s second vice president.Then, from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson served as our country’s third president. During his time as president, he made the Louisiana Purchase, which nearly doubled the size of the United States. In 1819, after his retirement from public office, he founded the University of Virginia, the first completely secular public university in the United States.Unfortunately, Jefferson’s essential role in the founding of our country is complicated by the fact that he owned over six hundred enslaved people—more than any other president in all of United States history. He nominally deplored slavery in writing, calling it a “moral depravity,” an “abominable crime,” and a “hideous blot.” He even said that it was the greatest threat to fledgling American democracy. Despite this, over the course of his entire lifetime, Jefferson only set two of the people he owned as slaves free. He set five more free in his will. All his other slaves were sold after his death to cover his debts.There is strong evidence that the slaves on Jefferson’s plantation were brutally abused and mistreated on a daily basis. For instance, the nail factory at Monticello was staffed solely by enslaved children. A report written in Jefferson’s Farm Book by his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. records that the enslaved children didn’t like showing up early in the morning during the cold of winter to work at the nailery, but the overseer scourged them all “for truancy,” which made things run much more smoothly.Jefferson was also an avowed white supremacist and he firmly believed that non-white people had no place in American society. He regarded all black people as naturally inferior to white people, calling them “as incapable as children.” He supported the gradual end of slavery through voluntary manumission, but believed that black people would have to all be shipped back to Africa once they were free so that the United States could become a homogenous white society.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the present-day vegetable garden at Monticello, where the over six hundred people enslaved by Thomas Jefferson were forced to workAs I discuss in this article from November 2019, Jefferson’s hypocrisy over slavery was pointed out at the time. On 19 August 1791, the prominent black abolitionist writer Benjamin Banneker (lived 1731 – 1806) wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which he quotes back Jefferson’s own words from the Declaration of Independence and indicts Jefferson of hypocrisy, writing:“Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the Same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the Same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”Unfortunately, Jefferson did far more than just own slaves; he also sexually exploited them.Jefferson’s wife Martha Jefferson was the daughter of John Wayles, a wealthy plantation owner. Wayles repeatedly had sex with an enslaved black woman named Betty Hemings and, in around 1773, she gave birth to a daughter named Sally Hemings. Because her mother was a slave, Sally was a slave as well. When John Wayles died that same year, his daughter Martha inherited all his slaves. Thus, Sally Hemings passed into Thomas Jefferson’s possession.Martha Jefferson died in 1782, but her half-sister, the young Sally Hemings, was said to bear a striking resemblance to her. In 1787, Sally Hemings, who was only fourteen years old at the time, was chosen to accompany Thomas Jefferson to Paris. At some point between her arrival in Paris and her return to Virginia in 1790 at the age of about seventeen, Thomas Jefferson began having sex with her. Over the course of the following years, Sally Hemings gave birth to six children. Jefferson is believed to have been the father of all of them.When word first got out of Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings in 1802, it created an enormous stir. Jefferson’s political enemies used rumors of the affair against him, portraying him as a lecher. For nearly two centuries, historians tried to deny that Jefferson really had an affair with Sally Hemings, but a series of genetic studies conducted between 1998 and 2001 effectively confirmed that Jefferson really was the father of Hemings’s children.ABOVE: A lewd political cartoon from c. 1804, mocking Thomas Jefferson’s notorious affair with his slave Sally HemingsThe Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. was constructed between 1939 and 1943. Built in the Neoclassical style, it is one of this country’s most beloved landmarks. The survey “America’s Favorite Architecture” conducted in 2007 and 2008 under the sponsorship of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) found that the Jefferson Memorial was the fourth most admired work of architecture in the United States and the most admired memorial building. I’m personally going to have to agree with them; it truly is an extraordinarily beautiful building.This puts us in a very difficult situation. How do we deal with the fact that a building that is widely agreed to be one of the most beautiful in the United States is effectively a temple to a man who held over six hundred human beings in bondage and kept a teenaged girl as his personal sex slave? We rightly regard Jeffrey Epstein as a monster for engaging in the sexual trafficking of teenaged girls, but, for some reason, we have a tendency to excuse Thomas Jefferson.I think that, no matter what, the Jefferson Memorial should remain standing, since it is historic building and a truly magnificent work of architecture—but it cannot remain the way it is. Right now, the Jefferson Memorial only tells one part of the story of Thomas Jefferson.The story of those six hundred some enslaved black people who worked on his plantation at Monticello matters, not just because it tells us a lot about what our country was like in the days when it was founded, but also because it tells us a lot about what our country is like now; there are probably thousands of people alive today who are descended from Thomas Jefferson’s slaves. Honoring Jefferson for all the good he did without acknowledging the bad is an insult to all those people.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. from across the Tidal Basin at duskABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the main entry to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the colossal statue of Thomas Jefferson inside the Jefferson MemorialGeorge MasonGeorge Mason (lived 1725 – 1792) is best known today as the primary author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, on which the United States Bill of Rights is based. Mason was also one of the foremost proponents of the addition of a Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. Without him, we probably wouldn’t have a federal Bill of Rights at all.Despite this, Mason personally owned over a hundred enslaved people. He owned more enslaved people than anyone else in Fairfax County, Virginia, other than George Washington himself. Although he denounced the slave trade, as far as we know, he never set a single one of the people he enslaved free.The George Mason Memorial stands in West Potomac Park in Washington D.C. Its construction was first authorized in 1990. Construction on the memorial began in 2000 and the completed memorial was officially dedicated in 2002.I don’t think that the George Mason Memorial should be torn down, but I do think it should be contextualized. Whatever good Mason did for this country will forever be tainted by his association with slavery and, once again, if we don’t contextualize his memorial, we are directly insulting the people he owned as slaves and their living descendants.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the George Mason Memorial in Washington D.C.Francis Griffith NewlandsFrancis Griffith Newlands (lived 1846 – 1917) was a United States representative and Senator from the state of Nevada. He didn’t own slaves, but he was an extremely outspoken supporter of white supremacy and segregation. He once wrote: “blacks are a race of children requiring guidance, industrial training and development of self-control.”Newlands publicly argued that non-white immigrants should be banned from entering the United States. He strongly supported restricting the rights of black Americans and, in 1912, he argued in favor of flat-out repealing the Fifteenth Amendment, which grants suffrage to all citizens, regardless of skin color.There’s frankly no good reason why Newlands should have a monument in our nation’s capital. Fortunately, his monument in Washington D.C. is just a fountain without any statues or huge inscriptions, which should make it fairly easy to rename.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Francis Griffith Newlands Memorial Fountain in Washington D.C.Albert PikeAlbert Pike (lived 1809 – 1891) was a lawyer, poet, writer, and Freemason. Perhaps surprisingly, as a lawyer, he was a tireless defender of the rights of Native Americans and he actually won several huge settlements for them from the United States government.Unfortunately, he held extremely racist views towards black people. In the years before the Civil War, he owned at least one slave. He claimed that slavery was a “necessary evil” because he thought that black people were naturally so stupid and lazy that they would be incapable of surviving on their own in the civilized world.After his home state of Arkansas voted to secede from the Union in May 1861, Pike became an avowed supporter of the Confederacy. During the Civil War, Pike served as a brigadier general in the Confederate army. He trained three regiments of Native Americans—most of whom came from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole tribes—to serve as Confederate soldiers.His time as an officer was short-lived, however, because, after his troops saw combat for the first time in the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, he was accused of having allowed his troops to scalp Union soldiers while they were still alive. He submitted his resignation on 12 July 1862.After the war, Pike remained an ardent supporter of white supremacy and was staunchly opposed to suffrage for black people. He was a member of the Committee of the Citizens of Little Rock and Pulaski County and, in 1858, along with eleven other members of the committee, he signed a circular that called for white citizens to forcibly expel all black people from the state of Arkansas. He is also rumored to have been a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan.Pike was instrumental in developing many of the rites and rituals used in Scottish Rite Freemasonry. In 1871, he published a book titled Morals and Dogmas of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which remains an important text for Freemasons even today. (The book itself is controversial, though, since substantial portions of it are plagiarized from the French occultist Éliphas Lévi.)A memorial for Pike was erected in Judiciary Square in Washington D.C. in 1901. The memorial included a bronze statue of Pike depicting him as a Freemason, standing atop a granite pedestal. For many decades, it was the only outdoor monument in Washington D.C. honoring a Confederate military officer.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Albert Pike Memorial in Washington D.C. as it appeared in 2008ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Albert Pike memorial statue in Washington D.C.On 19 June 2020, a group of protesters spray-painted Black Lives Matter slogans on the pedestal of the statue, toppled the statue itself with ropes and chains, doused it in flammable liquid, and set it on fire. Only the pedestal on which the statue once stood remains standing. The debate over what to do with the statue and the now-empty pedestal remains ongoing.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the pedestal of the Albert Pike Memorial taken on 2 July 2020George WashingtonGeorge Washington (lived 1732 – 1799) is by far one of the most revered figures in all of United States history. He is known as the “Father of His Country.” He served as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Without his leadership, the United States probably wouldn’t exist as an independent nation today. From 1789 until 1797, he served as the first president of the United States. His presidency set the direct precedent for all future presidencies.At the same time, George Washington was a lifelong slaveowner; his parents owned enslaved people when he was growing up and he personally inherited ten enslaved people upon the death of his father Augustine in 1743 when he was only eleven years old.In some ways, Washington was less cruel to his slaves than some other slaveowners in Virginia during his time. For instance, he insisted on keeping enslaved families together, which was something that many other slaveowners didn’t do. Likewise, there is no evidence that Washington ever forced any of his slaves to perform sexual favors for him, which at least puts him a step up from Thomas Jefferson.On the other hand, Washington was extremely demanding towards his slaves. Washington was an obsessive workaholic and he expected the enslaved people he owned to work just as hard as he did. He forced them to work from dawn till dusk, six days a week. When they didn’t work as hard as he wanted them to, he had them whipped. Richard Parkinson, one of Washington’s neighbors, wrote that Washington treated his slaves “…with more severity than any other man.” On one occasion, he ordered for an enslaved man to be whipped just for walking on the grass.He was also relentless in his pursuit of slaves who tried to run away and passed laws that made it easier for slaveowners to pursue escaped slaves. In February 1793, he signed the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it a federal crime to assist an escaped slave in any way or interfere with efforts to recapture an escaped slave and made it legal for slavecatchers to hunt for escaped slaves in every state and every territory.When an enslaved woman named Oney Judge escaped from Washington’s captivity in 1796, Washington posted advertisements for her capture in dozens of major newspapers and dispatched agents to hunt her down and bring her back. He continued his ruthless mission to hunt her down for three years until he finally died in 1799.ABOVE: Washington as a Farmer at Mount Vernon, painted in 1851 by Junius Brutus Stearns—a heavily idealized and inaccurate representation of George Washington as a kind slaveownerUp until the American Revolution, Washington doesn’t seem to have even questioned the morality of owning slaves; he just accepted slavery as normal and natural. After the revolution, Washington’s views on slavery began to change. He began to express discomfort with the idea of slavery in private—but he never spoke out publicly against the practice.At the time of Washington’s death in 1799, there were no less than 317 slaves working on his plantation at Mount Vernon. He personally owned 123 of them. Another 153 of them belonged to his wife’s family. The remaining forty-one slaves belonged to other people, who loaned them to him.Washington stipulated in his will that all 123 of the slaves he personally owned were to be set free upon the death of his wife Martha. Martha, however, ended up signing a order to free all her late husband’s slaves in December 1800 because she was afraid that the slaves would try to murder her for their freedom. The 153 slaves belonging to Martha’s family were never set free and, upon her death, were inherited by her grandchildren.In addition to owning slaves, during his time as commander-in-chief, Washington also ordered the violent destruction of Native American communities that had aligned with the British. For instance, in 1779, he ordered General John Sullivan to totally destroy all the villages of the Iroquois nation and to take their women and children as hostages. As president, he permitted the further encroachment of white settlers onto native land.Despite his many misdeeds, Washington was greatly beloved among white settlers. Upon his death, Major-General Henry Lee III famously described him as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” The Washington Monument in D.C. was constructed in two phases. The first phase lasted from 1848 to 1854. During this phase of construction, slave labor was almost certainly used to haul the stones from the quarries, which were in Maryland. The second phase of construction began in 1879, after slavery was abolished, and lasted until 1884.As with the Jefferson Memorial, I don’t think that the Washington Monument should be torn down under any circumstances, but it would be good to add a sign or something to remind people that, while Washington may have been instrumental in the founding of this country, he was also a ruthless slave-driver and a destroyer of native communities.ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Washington Monument in the center of the National Mall in Washington D.C.ConclusionI understand that many people do not want to hear anything I am saying, that they will call me “unpatriotic” for pointing out the flaws of some of our country’s most beloved national heroes. This is a conversation we need to be having, though. If we continue to deny that the Founding Fathers and other revered figures from our past were deeply, deeply flawed human beings, that isn’t history; that’s idolatry.True history is not always pleasant. It doesn’t inspire patriotism. It doesn’t make people proud of their ancestry. Instead, it has a tendency to make people uncomfortable. The people we admire are seldom worthy of the admiration we give them. Though their actions may be significant, those actions are not always good.This doesn’t mean that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are “cancelled,” but it does mean that we need to think really hard about the ways we choose to honor them. Likewise, this isn’t about “erasing history”; if anything, it is about correcting history, since the history we’ve told for so long is incomplete.(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “No, We’re Not Tearing Down the Washington Monument—But Contextualizing It Might Be a Good Idea.” Here is a link to the version of the article on my website.)

Excellent question. Actually the answer is interrelated among the three aircraft due to their differing capabilities, differing design maturity levels, key decision points in the manufacturing and deployment process, and - of course, the exigencies of war and their performance in training and combat. All three aircraft were generally successful in use, but their applications, achievements, and reputations varied. Many factors influenced how each was designed, tested, assembled, and used - including before, during, and after the war.The first of these - Boeing B-17 - was given its basic design beginning in August 1934. It was a “direct aerodynamic and structural combination” of the Model 247 airliner and the Model 294 experimental extra-heavy bomber, then designed but unbuilt as the XB-15, and given Boeing Model number 299. It was deliberately designed to a medium bomber specification but given four engines instead of the traditional two - this because Boeing knew competition had access to the same powerplants; therefore a performance edge might be obtained by having more power on a similar-sized airframe.The Model 299 prototype emerged as an elegant emblem of the art deco style of design - simultaneously futuristically beautiful and yet practical to use. A Seattle journalist declared the prototype to be a “veritable flying fortress” - an alliterative name that Boeing was quick to trademark. The new aircraft was unlike anything seen before - quite large for its day, yet very sleek, modern, and free of any material excess. In August 1935 the new aircraft set speed records flying to the Army Air Corps fly-off competition in Dayton, Ohio. It was two hours early and embarrassed officials who were late in meeting it.Despite this success, the road ahead was rocky for the Boeing aircraft. The prototype famously crashed when elevator gust locks were left in place on takeoff. This incident highlighted the need for pilot checklists which of course are now standard in aviation. The Air Corps had much to learn about not only the aircraft, but the flight envelope it opened - early 299 Models were faster than existing Air Corps fighters. And - the plane exacerbated debate within the Army about the role of bomber aircraft and the controversial need for a more independent air service. In this environment Boeing was awarded a contract for only 13 service test models of the new airplane in January 1936, which was now officially designated ‘B-17.’As the Air Corps began to take delivery of these early B-17s more trouble arose: pilots unfamiliar with so large and sophisticated an aircraft skidded one on its nose (through misapplied brakes) and created other mishaps. Another was inadvertently flown into a thunderstorm and spun out of control until the pilots could recover and land safely. This aircraft happened to be instrumented and strain gauges recorded stresses in excess of design limits. As a result a static test airframe was converted into a test mule for new turbosupercharger technology under development at GE. These interrelated developments would prove to have long-term implications for both the B-17 and the Air Corps.Equipped with the new superchargers, B-17s entered low-volume production and progressed through three design iterations during the late 1930s. During this time the aircraft made many headlines - one of which resulted in controversy after the Air Corps sent three B-17s to meet the Italian ocean liner Rex 600 miles offshore. The Navy - always conscious of its turf - objected strongly and forced an agreement keeping Army aircraft within 100 miles of the U.S. coast. In retrospect this agreement appears anachronistic at best but provides insight into the mentality prevailing at the time. The B-17 was breaking new ground not only in performance but also in policy. The key policy - one that would shape the course of the air war - was that of daylight precision bombing. This concept would evolve into a hard-edged doctrine that the Army Air Forces would pursue with great determination.The Consolidated B-24 was a much later design. It was originally considered to be a next-generation bomber compared to the B-17 and featured a new and more efficient airfoil concept designed by aerodynamicist David R. Davis, known as the ‘Davis wing’ which maintained laminar flow over more surface area compared to conventional airfoils, reducing drag. The new bomber was related to a flying boat design, the model 31, which had the Davis wing and a twin fin and rudder layout - both B-24 characteristics. Inherited also from the flying boat predecessor was the shoulder-mounted wing layout which required long main gear legs and resulted in relatively low fuselage ground clearance. The new high-aspect ratio wing profile conferred lower drag and longer range, particularly at low- to medium altitudes.Although design work on the B-24 began in January 1939, after the B-17 had been in service for over two years, interestingly the B-24 was sized similar to the B-17 and used similar power - Pratt and Whitney R-1830 radials compared to Wright R-1820s. Each engine was in the 1000–1200 HP class. Like the B-17, the B-24 was unpressurized. However, it did feature tri-cycle landing gear - then a relatively new idea - making aircraft ground handling somewhat easier by comparison. The B-24 also had a larger bomb bay, not being restricted to the ‘medium bomber’ bay of the B-17.The B-24 benefitted from the pioneering work done by the Air Corps with the B-17. Whereas the B-17 had to be fought for at every step of the way, by the time the B-24 was in prospect, it was becoming clear that ‘heavy bombers’ would be required in any war scenario. By the time the XB-24 flew at the end of December, 1939, the war in Europe was well underway and the environment for purchasing new bomber aircraft was significantly different compared to prior years. In this time the U.S. military was both detached from, and yet intimately aware of, the impending world crisis. Contracts for new aircraft, new aircraft plants, and new airfields were let. And precursors to Lend Lease - sale of U.S. military aircraft to Britain and France - were underway. The XB-24 attracted interest from several quarters.The performance expectation for the B-24 was such that it was thought to be superior to the B-17 - and compared to early B-17 models in some respects it was, particularly when comparing range-payload between early small fin B-17s and early production B-24s. Based on these somewhat theoretical analyses, planners began working on a massive scheme to produce the B-24 in quantity, which would ultimately include five manufacturers - including the famous Ford Willow Run plant, which ultimately produced a bomber an hour, around the clock. The B-24 was destined to be the most-produced heavy bomber of the war, and also the most-produced American combat aircraft of any type.Meantime, in May 1940, the Air Corps had asked Boeing to redesign the B-17 to accommodate gun turrets and other upgrades. The result was a completely new aircraft behind the wing. As if aided by a magic wand, Boeing turned an excellent if somewhat outmoded bomber into a real thoroughbred. Several areas were addressed simultaneously: flying stability, structural integrity, and defensive armament capabilities. Now the Air Corps had two new heavy bomber designs in hand to fight the war that would come. The new B-17 version would prove to have outstanding development potential, and three plants were dedicated to producing it. The “Arsenal of Democracy” was gearing up for war.Off the military stage, Boeing had developed an airliner version of the Model 299 - the Model 307 - that incorporated cabin pressurization in an airliner for the first time in history. This aircraft - the Stratoliner - was marketed as the “1940 Airliner” but was never fully established due the war. However, the concept formed the basis for pressurized bomber studies that evolved through several designs - Model 334; Model 341; and finally Model 345 - as the war first swept through Europe and Japan continued its assault in Asia. The Air Corps was interested but from a distance since there was no official specification for the aircraft. It was Charles Lindbergh - often derided for his perspectives on Nazi Germany - who pushed the USAAF into official sponsorship of the pressurized bomber design. Boeing was now clearly in the lead in the heavy bomber business, and this new bomber was given the ‘B-29’ designation.But as the world war unfolded the B-24 program was moving along smartly. Early models were provided to the RAF; the U.S. Navy took an interest; and the USAAF began training and deployment of the aircraft. In addition to its primary role as a bomber, the B-24 was pressed into service in a variety of other capacities - notably as a transport, for ocean patrol, photo reconnaissance, and early versions of ferrets (used electronic eavesdropping). The key attributes of long range with adequate payload while flying at low- to medium altitudes fitted many of these vocations very well. And - as production ramped up - the B-24 had the invaluable attribute of being very widely available.But over time, limitations of the B-24 design began to emerge. These included inadequate high-altitude flying capability, structural weaknesses, and high control efforts for the pilots. As the B-24 design was evolved, these limitations became more pronounced due to the weight of added equipment, sail area of an elongated nose, and drag of added turrets. As happens to some military aircraft designs, over time an aircraft with very acceptable characteristics is overburdened such that its flying qualities decline. This was to be the fate of the B-24. But the war was an emergency; the B-24 was “good enough” to fight the war and the machinery of production and deployment had immense inertia. The B-24 would have to serve, and it did so with considerable distinction.In contrast early model B-17s turned in a mixed performance in combat. Twenty B-17C models sent to the RAF fared poorly for a number of reasons, not least of which was the lack of an RAF doctrine for using the aircraft. A group of unarmed B-17s literally flew into the Pearl Harbor attack and some were damaged and few on the ground destroyed. Others, based in the Philippines, fought a rag-tag war of attrition. In this role they earned an excellent reputation, particularly when the new tail-gun equipped E models entered combat. The Japanese very quickly learned that the B-17E was a formidable opponent and in fact called it a “four engine pursuit plane suitable for all purposes” - a very high accolade. However, all E- and early F-model B-17s lacked long-range “Tokyo tanks” in their outer wings, forcing the use of bomb bay tanks on long missions, cutting down the bombload. At the time B-24s did not have this issue, which led to the long-running myth that B-24s carried more bombs further than B-17s. In fact this was true for a time in the Pacific war and was a factor in deployment decisions. However, most of B-17 production had Tokyo tanks, which gave the aircraft essentially the same range-payload equation as the B-24.Nevertheless, during 1943 B-24s gradually replaced most B-17s in the Pacific. The primary reason was not range/payload, but the need for B-17s in the ETO. High Command determined that the more numerous B-24 should have priority for the Pacific theater, where ranges were long and altitudes flown relatively low - circumstances best suited to B-24 characteristics. Over Germany, where high altitude performance, toughness, defensive armament, and excellent formation flying capability were necessities, the B-17 was the natural choice. While B-17s were replaced in Pacific bomb groups, several remained in the theater as armed combat transports and executive transports. Beginning in 1945, as supply improved, B-17s were reintroduced into the theatre in substantial numbers. But from mid-1943 until large-scale introduction of the B-29, B-24s served as the heavy bomber in the theater and is recognized for its generally good performance against the Japanese.In the ETO things were different. The 8th Air Force was pioneered and led by B-17 groups. The few B-24 groups originally slated were quickly shifted to the Mediterranean Theater, with other B-24 groups joining later. Buildup of the 8th was slow initially as the logistics pipeline was established. Only 12 B-17Es conducted the first strategic bombing mission, to Rouen, France - a long, long stretch to 1000-plane raids on Berlin. The 8th had a lot to learn and a lot to do in taking on the formidable Nazi war machine. This job was primarily that of the B-17 alone. There were very few fighter escorts at first, those that were available had very short range, and the long, hard road to defeating Germany with daylight bombing had to be borne by B-17s. This would prove to be the toughest job in the history of aerial warfare and - now it appears clear - no other aircraft available at the time could have taken on this very costly duty.“She was a purple lady - but she packed a wallop” was the caption to a B-17G photo in one book on the air war. The reference to “purple” was, of course, to purple hearts: many were earned by B-17 crews. Too many were posthumous. B-17 build up continued from July 1942 until finally, in January 1943, raids on Germany proper began. Flying high in the stratosphere, leaving the escort behind at the fuel bingo point, tightening formation, guns at the ready, the B-17s droned on and on into the hostile sky. At some point the battle would be joined, and fast, heavily armed Nazi fighters - crewed by well-trained and intrepid pilots - challenged the intruding bombers. Not once was a B-17 formation turned back; but there were losses - on both sides. Over time, bomber losses became heavier. The reason, of course, is that they represented a dire threat to the Reich. This was the “schwerpunktbildung” - Prussian military language for “concentration of force at the point of attack” - and that is what both sides did. The result was the most desperate aerial battles in history.Into this maelstrom B-24s were introduced, forming a new division of the 8th AF. The Arsenal of Democracy was producing a great wealth of aircraft, and the plentiful B-24 was fighting on almost every front. As new groups were added to the 8th, they were given “milk run” missions to soft targets or flown as diversions while gaining experience. This period of working up was short. As soon as possible green crews and new combat units were sent into the mainstream of combat. Unfortunately B-17 and B-24 groups could not easily be operated together: the B-24 was slightly faster, particularly below 15,000 feet; but it could not fly above 23,000 feet with a full combat load. The B-17, on the other hand, easily flew at 25–30,000. Flying higher was safer from flak and put more pressure on Luftwaffe interceptors. One B-17 pilot later said, “you didn’t need to worry about flak and fighters when the B-24s were around.” But as time went on B-24s comprised about a third of the 8th’s bomber inventory. Like the B-17s above them, B-24s flew into the hell of combat.A vital aspect of the war was the logistics pipeline to the U.K. Protecting this pipeline was a critical necessity as the U-Boat fleet created havoc in 1942 and stood as an extreme threat to the Allied cause. Convoys needed close-in air cover and long-range aerial reconnaissance all across the Atlantic. Until B-24s were placed in this service, there was a gap in air coverage exploited by the Kriegsmarine. Again, the low-altitude range and endurance of the B-24 made it a natural choice for this duty, and both RAF Coastal Command and the USN used it for this purpose, flying out of a variety of bases - some quite inhospitable. The B-24 has been widely credited for its role in defeating the U-Boats, and served as arguably the most important single aircraft employed in the Battle of the Atlantic - although it certainly had a lot of help in the form of such aircraft as Catalinas, Sunderlands, and some Coastal Command B-17s.Nor was this the only battle facing the program. The second prototype aircraft was lost with famous engineering test pilot Eddie Allen, his crew, and about 20 victims on the ground when an inextinguishable engine fire spread to the wing in February 1943. The root cause was the underdeveloped Wright R-3350 engine - itself rushed into production - which at the time featured a magnesium alloy crankcase. A severe engine fire could ignite the magnesium, quickly becoming an uncontrollable inferno. Other problems dogged the program too - for example, organizing the huge supply base, tracking parts, and dealing with part quality and logistics. One accountant later said that just the parts he personally managed required a spreadsheet fifty feet long that was literally kept in a scroll. Such work required an army of clerks in an era of manual tabulation.The B-29 itself was a fantastic step function change from the B-17 and B-24. It was much larger and heavier, featured a Boeing-designed airfoil that incorporated laminar flow but avoided some of the weaknesses of the Davis wing; the crew cabin was pressurized; and bomber was equipped with a very sophisticated GE remote fire control system featuring analog computers. The wing itself was fitted with area-increasing fowler flaps, which helped enable the B-29 to carry roughly twice the bomb load twice as far at the prior heavy bombers while also being much faster. But it was a far more complex machine which demanded exacting crew coordination and required much longer and stronger runways, and larger hangars. Aviation infrastructure itself had to adapt to the new design.By mid-1943 the war in the Pacific had taken a firm turn in the Allies favor. The Battle of Guadalcanal had been won and the roll-back of the Japanese defense perimeter was underway. As the Allies advanced, bases could move forward. In this context B-24s based in New Guinea were flying missions to the Balikpapan oil installations so great in range that their bomb loads were cut to only 2500 pounds. The Pacific theater was vast - even the B-24 had trouble with the range requirements. But the mission profile was much less daunting than in the ETO - except for the long stretches over open ocean. This and many other dangers were ever present among heavy bomber crews.In Europe and the Mediterranean, however, the main air battles were just beginning. Two heavy bomber missions in August 1943 showed just how dangerous and costly these battles could be. On the first of August, B-24s from five groups based in Libya attacked Nazi-controlled oil infrastructure at Ploesti, Romania. This raid was brazenly flown at low level and some 53 of 177 aircraft were lost - thirty percent of the attacking force, taking with them 310 KIA and 190 captured or interned. No fewer than five medals of honor were conferred, the largest number ever for a single wartime action - three awarded posthumously. The refinery complex lost 40% capacity as a result of the raid, but output was restored in a few weeks. Clearly this outcome was far too low a return for such an investment in lives and equipment.The second costly August mission was the “anniversary raid” of the 17th, when 376 B-17s bombed Regensburg and Schweinfurt, Germany. The mission plan was complex: two large formations would attack the targets in coordination, with the Regensburg element flying on to North Africa instead of returning to the U.K. directly. It was hoped by this tactic that Nazi fighter opposition would be disrupted. As with all-too many operations conducted by the 8th, the weather proved to be another enemy; while the Regensburg element comprising 146 aircraft took off on time, the Schweinfurt element could not. Weather also disrupted routes and times for the Thunderbolt and Spitfire escort. Nevertheless, daring two-pronged mission - having already been scrubbed twice by weather - was continued despite the daunting odds.As the Regensburg raid developed, the bombers had very little escort due to missed rendezvous, weather, and fighter range limitations. Flying into heavy Luftwaffe opposition, the B-17s fought gallantly on to the target, which - at the time - was weakly defended by flak. The Messerschmidt aircraft plant target was decisively bombed; and the unexpected turn to the south gave the aircraft respite from further fighter attacks - but still 24 Fortresses were lost and many were damaged. Meantime the Schweinfurt element - already delayed by weather - ran into a cloud formation that forced the bombers down to 17,000 feet, far below the briefed altitudes of about 24–27,000 feet. Because of this factor, inadequate/missing escort, and new Luftwaffe tactics, 36 aircraft were lost. Bombing results were good, but - as with the oil facilities at Ploesti - production was badly disrupted instead of ended. Together the two B-17 attacking forces lost 60 aircraft - nearly sixteen percent of those dispatched.These two August raids collectively cost the USAAF 113 heavy bombers - an unacceptable overall loss rate of twenty percent. Further, in total 1,052 well-trained aircrew were killed, captured, or interned. This harsh reality illustrated just how dangerous Nazi defenses had become, as well as how disruptive weather could be. It also highlighted the need for more and better escorting fighters, as well as better fighter tactics and coordination with the bombers. Despite these realities, the war couldn’t wait. Potential solutions to the overarching problems would take time to develop and implement; meantime the vicious air war continued, and more adversity lay ahead.Life had taken a grim turn for U.S. heavy bomber crews, who lived in a Schizophrenic sort of paradigm where, after facing a high-probability of violent death during the day would return to their bases for a hot meal, a beer, and maybe even the company of a girlfriend. A close comrade in the next bunk may or may not be there the night after a bombing raid. The odds of making the required 25 missions to complete a tour were - at the time - distinctly unfavorable: in mid-1943 the average 8th AF crewman made only eleven missions before becoming a KIA, WIA or MIA statistic.In the world outside these tension-filled bomber bases, B-17s and B-24s went about many other duties: training, reconnaissance, transport, and experimental services. Generals were fond of having their own personalized B-17 for executive missions; B-24s were used as dedicated C-87 cargo and personnel transports; B-17s were prized for their bad-weather flying capability and were the weather reconnaissance aircraft of choice when available. Both aircraft were used for photomapping and ferreting. Crews of these aircraft had their own challenges to meet, although in general they were less demanding than those of direct combat. Nevertheless training crashes took their toll, as did bad weather. At the time, flying in general was both glamorous and dangerous. For 8th AF crewmen, the glamor had mostly become a cruel illusion, but they painted creative and often suggestive nose art on their airplanes anyway. If one is flying into the jaws of death, why not have a bare-chested maiden symbolizing your spirit? Aircraft with names such as Iza Vailable, Homesick Angel, Laden Maiden, and Snoozen Susin, took their crews into hell.Back in the USA, the XB-29 had made its maiden flight in September 1942 and continued in development as the overall program was given vast resources - more, in fact, than those given to the Manhattan Project. The B-29 program involved not only engineering and development, tooling, and new plants, but also a large network of new airfields designed to accommodate what would become the world’s most sophisticated aircraft - and would become the most costly U.S. wartime initiative. The scale of difficulty is very hard to adequately communicate. From a prototype in September 1942 to March 1944 the Program compressed what would normally take years into 18 months. The result was flyable but incomplete B-29s scattered over airfields near the Boeing Wichita plant waiting to be upgraded to combat-capable levels. Maintenance personnel, often working outside in inclement weather, undertook these modifications in the late winter-early spring season of 1944. This operation became known as the “Battle of Kansas.”While all this was going on, the B-29 program continued to mature. In April 1944 the 20th Air Force, based at Smokey Hill AAF near Salina, Kansas, began organizing for deployment. Across the far Midwest, with its open spaces, and generally good flying weather, large if remote bases for B-29s had sprung up. One such, Walker Army Airfield, is exemplary. Located on Kansas farmland in between the oil-patch town of Russell and the college town of Hays, this base was in the midst of rural America. There was little for off-duty crews to do; Walker was isolated among the nodding sunflowers bowing before the ever-present prairie winds flowing from the southwest.There B-17s - used for transition training - and newly built B-29s plied their trades. Three runways - so long and deep in concrete that the entire cement capacity of the Midwest was devoted to them during their construction - dominated the base. A large apron facing equally large hangars accommodated these aircraft. The infrastructure included paved roads, a water tower, administrative buildings, personnel quarters - and even a swimming pool. This sort of base was duplicated in equally rural and remote places like Dodge City, Garden City, Great Bend, and Independence, Kansas - among several others. The latent power of an America held down by the Great Depression had swung into action - and, from this remove - the scale of the B-29 program remains breathtaking.*** This answer is incomplete, it was inadvertently published. Please consider it to be a work in progress. Thanks. ***