Subject: B-24 Liberator
From: Guy Alcala
Date: 8/31/03 11:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Cub Driver wrote:

The general feeling seemed to be that the brass liked the B-24 because
it could carry more bombs farther, whereas aircrew (given a choice)
would opt for the B-17 because it was easier to fly and more like to
survive battle damage.

It entirely depends on the theater. The B-24 was preferred in the PTO and
CBI by both "the Brass" and crews because of its better range and payload,
and its lower ceiling and somewhat lower vulnerability to damage compared
to the B-17 wasn't as important when facing more lightly-armed and lower
performance Japanese fighters. In the ETO the B-17 was preferred, because
of its higher ceiling (in formation) and relative ease of close formation
flying for hours, better damage tolerance, and because its lesser
payload/range really didn't matter in Europe (oh, and better heating).
The MTO was sort of the balancing theater, where the benefits and
advantages of both more or less cancelled out. Even so, since most crews
never got to try the other brand, they tended to prefer the one they were
flying, appreciating its advantages and deprecating its disadvantages vis
a vis the other type. Here's Walter Hughes, who flew B-24s in the ETO
(93rd BG), and who got a single ride in a B-17:

"There was always rivalry about the merits of the B-17 versus the B-24.
We thought the B-17s were slow; we flew just above staling speed on joint
missions so we wouldn't overrun them. They thought the B-24 couldn't take
it because we needed more engines to stay in the air. There was only an
individual answer to which was best. I liked the greater versatility,
speed and bomb capacity of my B-24 and would never willingly trade it for
a B-17.

"A cadet classmate of mine was in a B-17 squadron nearby and through him I
got my only ride in 'the Fortress'. They did have some advantages. For
example the cockpit was warm* so they flew missions in flying suits only,
whereas we wore five layers of clothing and if our electric-heated suit
went out, we could not survive the intense cold. In fact, if two of our
crew members' electric suits failed, we could abort the mission. Our
coldest mission was at a temperature of minus 60 degress F. On that
mission, the bomb bay doors froze shut so we dropped the bombs right
through them. The oil operating the hydraulic propeller controls got so
thick we couldn't change power settings on the engines."

*Elsewhere, Hughes writes: "The B-24 was a cold ship to fly missions in.
It had a heater for the flight deck but very few pilots would allow it to
be used because it burned raw gasoline and was a fire hazard. The other
stations (nose, tail and waist) had no auxiliary heat." At least on
earlier B-24s, there were also usually fumes from the leaky Rube Goldberg
transfer system in the bomb bay, so most pilots tended to fly with the
bomb bay doors slightly cracked open to prevent the fumes from building
up. This didn't help the comfort of the gunners in the after part of the
a/c.


In "The Day We Bombed Switzerland," a former B-24 crewman wrote about
the court-martial (headed by Jimmy Stewart!) of the crew of the plane
that bombed a Swiss railway junction instead of a German one. Guilt
hinged on whether "a reasonable man" would have made the mistake they
did.

The author goes out and looks at the 24s on the flight line, dripping
gasoline and just waiting to go up in flames, and he muses: "A
reasonable man wouldn't go within a mile of a B-24."

In a biography of Stewart published shortly before he died, the story is
related of one of his missions where a heavy flak round passed through the
ship from bottom to top, just behind the flight deck, not detonating but
breaking much of the structure. Stewart brought the a/c back and landed
it as gently as possible, whereupon the bottom of the fuselage broke just
there (the upper fuselage was still connected), dragging the two
barely-connected bottom pieces of the fuselage along the runway before the
a/c finally came to a halt. The crew chief (who related the story) went
running over to see if everyone got out okay, and came upon Stewart
standing off to the side of the a/c, looking at the damage. Stewart
turned to him and said (in Stewart's drawl), "You know, Sergeant,
somebody could get hurt in one of these things!"

Guy


Guy,

Thanks for those interesting quotes We need more combat flying stuff around
here. Got more? Post it.

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