Corky,
Well put.
The B-26 was the first high wing loading airplane the Army used and it
demonstrated that the training procedures in use were way out of date
and dangerous (as I recall, the wing loading is today considered no big
deal - about the same as a Cessna 310 - but then it was completely
new). Once the training got figured out, the airplane did extremely
well, its speed made it valuable in combat. Naturally, having a nasty
(and undeserved) initial reputation, it never really got over it and
the Army dumped it, but after flying the kiddy car B-25, which is so
very easy to fly, it's understandable why it was kept and the -26
dumped once peace rolled around.
The horror stories of single engine handling ran around the block
pretty fast, and were naturally exaggerated by pilots who weren't so
hot in the first place and had to blame their own shortcomings on the
airplane. With appropriate training, the airplane flew as well as
anything else on one engine, however, Vmc was so high that there were
circumstances (as with the B-25) where power on the good engine had to
be reduced to maintain control of the airplane.
A major part of the problems with the B-26 were due to the Curtiss
Electric props, Prop malfunctions killed a lot of people and now the
FAA will not approve the electrics on the remaining airplanes that had
them, they have to use hydraulic props.
Another challenge was that the generator switches were located behind
the pilot's head (who designed switch positions back then?). If you
forgot to turn on the generators (and many did because of the switch
position and macho-posturing pilots who didn't use checklists), you had
enough juice in the batteries to start, taxi out and takeoff. At that
point the batteries went flat and the props ran away (went flat), which
was nearly unrecoverable.
All the best,
Rick
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