The B-47 bomber was the first Boeing airplane to use the new Boeing high-speed wind tunnel, the largest privately owned facility of its type, to test design solutions to the problems of combining jet propulsion with a slender, swept-back flexible wing. Completed in 1944, the tunnel was dedicated to Edmund "Eddie" Allen, test pilot and chief of Boeing Flight and Research from 1941 until his death in 1943 in the crash of the XB-29 during testing.