B-24 Liberator

Earlier I wrote about the better-known Allied bomber of WWII, the B-17 Flying Fortress.  It’s time to revisit the topic by discussing its less popular, but more highly produced, rival the B-24 Liberator. 

 My uncle flew a B-24 in the Pacific during WWII – he was the pilot, at age 18.  He managed to survive to tell the tales.  And the father of my former boss bailed out of a B-24 over Europe.  His squadron had been given a new bomber to replace the patched up one which had survived countless missions – only to have the new one shot down on its first mission.  With his parachute on, he bailed from the top of the plane, was whisked back over the twin tail, and was captured on the ground in December 1944, serving the rest of the war in a Stalag.  More famous B-24 crew members were pilot Jimmy Stewart (the actor) and US 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.

 Many, though not all, of the B-24’s were produced by Ford at its Willow Run plant.  The bomber saw action in all theaters of war (Jack Nicholson: “…all walks of life”), being predominant in the Pacific and famous for the low-level raids of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania in 1943; the raids suffered heavy losses, yet the refineries were back up to full capacity after only a month.  In addition to standard bombing raids on German industry and Romanian oil, the B-24 also performed supply missions (they dropped supplies to Chapman’s teams in Malaysia) and dropped Resistance agents by parachutes through the belly turret hole (also in Malaysia). 

 Like the B-17, the B-24 had an impressive array of .50 cal armament, including front and rear turrets, a belly turret, and waist gunners.  Despite the obvious claustrophobia and fact that the belly gunner could only enter or leave the turret during flight, studies showed the belly gunner had the lowest fatality rate; however, other studies showed the belly turret being mostly useless, and on later models it was omitted without any change in bomber casualties. 

 The B-24 had its Davis wing high up, a twin tail, and rollaway bomb bay doors and a larger payload than the B-17.   The powerplant was the Pratt & Whitney R-1830, a 1000 HP, 1,830 cubic inch (30 L) 14 cylinder, two row radial engine.  Just as the B-24 ended up as the highest produced Allied aircraft of WWII, the R-1830 was the highest produced aircraft engine.  In the B-24, the engine was turbo-supercharged.

 The B-17 gets most of the attention.  Surely, as an airplane it’s much more aethestically pleasing: it simply looks like a very large plane, but its proportions are right.  The B-24 was ridiculed as “the box the B-17 came in”, and it’s hard to argue that it’s certainly not as pretty as its rival.  It was faster, could carry more, but could not fly as high, as easily, or endure as much damage or punishment as the B-17.  But surely its story has as a much right to be told as the B-17.