ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: marauder radio operator
From: (Ron)
Date: 12/7/03 8:51 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

(ArtKramr) wrote in message
...
Subject: marauder radio operator
From: (Ron)
Date: 12/6/03 7:03 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

Got a new book out of the library, Marching Home by Kevin Coyne. In it
is a story about Bill Lopatin,radio operator on "We Dood It" with thw
322nd.
Seems to be a straight forward account of life in the Marauder over
Europe.
What say you Art?
Ron

Don't know. But I'll ty to find a copy and let you know.The 322 nd was a
good
outfit located just to the North of us.
Regards,



Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

Hi Art,
A couple of things;
They had a load of 8 300# bombs and he pulled the safety pins off
just before dropping them. 4 didn't release so he re installed the
pins and they returned to base with them. Is this correct?
Ha had almost completed his 50 missions but when D-Day came the
criteria changed to an indefinite number of missions. Also correct?

Regards
Ron

None of it sounds correct. We had no pins, we had arming wires. They stayed in
all the time and were pulled automatically when the load was dropped. Any bombs
that failed to go out would have had their arming wires intact, and were
therefore safe. We never carried 300 pounders. We carried 8 500 pounders to
make upo the full load of 4,000 punds. But 8 300 pounders is less than our
limit but he could have flown a short load to get greater range. That is a
possibility.

The four B-26 groups that were active in the ETO in 1943 (322nd, 323rd, and IIRR
386th and 387th) were using 300 lb. bombs for most of the year, at least until the
VIIIth Support Command became part of the Ninth Air Force. Depending on when he
started his tour, it's certainly a possibility. BTW, the 300 lb. bomb actually
weighed 260 lb., and was later slightly modified while retaining the same size,
shape, and weight; the later version was known as the M57, and was called a 250 lb.
bomb even though it still weighed the same 260 lb. as the earlier version, which
IIRR was the M31).

I've never been able to establish just what the modification was, but maybe it had
something to do with the fuzing/arming method, as I've certainly read accounts of
heavy bombers using the older 300, 600 and 1,100 lb. bombs early in the war, where
the bombardier entered the bomb bay during flight to arm the bombs. I wonder; the
sole difference between the B-26F model and the B-26G that Art flew was the
substitution of A/N (Army/Navy, i.e. universal) bomb shackles for purely Army
ones. Is it possible the arming method could be part of that? It would be
impossible for navy single-engined a/c and AAF fighters which carried their bombs
externally to use a manual arming method unless they took off with armed bombs, so
they'd have to use the retained arming wire method Art describes (and which was
universal after the war, except for nukes).

Guy