The early version R-3350 problems were sorted.
True but the question is when and how expensive was it to sort them out? The Australian choice was made in 1944 IIRC for the Lincoln. The B-29 was still suffering problems and doubts then. I think on reflection that the B-29 would have been a wiser choice but not for us to manufacture them. We lacked the experience and the industry to make it a reality. We'd have been better off purchasing them or even better, just hanging onto our B-24s, which were fine aircraft and well suited to the role that the Lincoln fulfilled.
Lincoln max normal 14,000lbs, B-29 max normal 20,000lbs.
I will note that I used the word "internally" to qualify my point, Jon. IIRC the B-29 was only able to carry a smaller load than the Lancaster internally, when it was first mooted as the carrier for the A-Bomb. It required considerable modification to make it capable of fitting the Fat Man bomb into it's fuselage bomb bay (I assume it lacked the later external wing hard hard points?).
Uh, no the B-29 could always carry a greater weight of
standard munitions
internally than
any version of the
Lancaster or Lincoln, up to 40 AN-M64 500lb bombs (20,000 lbs), farther and faster to boot.
You're conflating the single long bay mod required for the
Thin Man design (long and skinny) with the
Fat Maninstallation. Only one aircraft was modded to fit a
Thin Man type device, the so called
Pullman mod and it was later
restored to normal B-29 configuration. The forward bomb-bay on the Silverplate aircraft did not require
extensive modification to fit
Little Boy or
Fat Man. A Brit style single-point bomb release was fitted to the forward bay on a redesigned
H-frame rack, the aft bay was used for fuel tanks. No mods were made to the doors or aircraft structure. External hardpoints
are irrelevant when discussing the first generation nukes as they were designed to be armed while in flight, kinda hard to do
if it's hangin' on the outside.
As to the R-3350 problems, which had zero to do with the aircraft design, the -41 version on the aircraft that were delivered in
July/August of 1945, and on, had adressed most of the issues. The switch from carburetor to fuel injection eliminating some
of the most serious.
Anyhow license production in Australia in the 1940s is extremely doubtful for reasons of technical/manufacturing capability,
cost, (doubtful that Oz industry of the period would be able to produce it and it would have been a budget buster,
with the two feeding each other negatively) and US security, both national and industrial. Both the military and the politicians
would have been loudly opposed.