It was a real problem, the top test pilot of the day and a bunch of Boeing engineers were killed on an early flight, engine caught fire and they crashed into a meat packing plant in Seattle. Killed about 20 on the ground, too. There was panic in the government, because they had placed all their eggs in the B-29 basket, it simply had to work.
The Consolidated B-32 Dominator (Consolidated Model 34) was an American heavy strategic bomber built for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. A B-32 was involved in the last air combat engagement of the war, resulting in the war's last American air combat death. It was developed by Consolidated Aircraft in parallel with the Boeing B-29 Superfortress as a fallback design should the B-29 prove unsuccessful.[1] The B-32 reached units in the Pacific only in mid-May 1945, and subsequently saw only limited combat operations against Japanese targets before the end of the war on 2 September 1945. Most of the extant orders of the B-32 were canceled shortly thereafter and only 118 B-32 airframes of all types were built.