Showing posts with label B-24. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2024

B-24J 42-100023 piloted by 2nd. Lt. Richard Zorn of Connecticut crashed on top of Casper Mountain, south of Casper, Wyoming, at about midnight, killing all on board.

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.:

Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.

The RAF hit Romania for the first time. On the same day, the Soviet Air Forces hit Galatz.

A large air raid was staged on Hollandia, Indonesia. The mission was successful with no losses, but the aircraft ran into a severe weather front on the return and 46 of the 170 aircraft in the raid went down. The day acquired the name "Black Sunday" as a result.

The attacking force was made up of B-24s, B-25s and A-20s, escorted by P-38s

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from the air

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from t...:

Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from the air, Teenagers lose at Tarnopol, Politics in Minnesota, Hydro-Québec

PB4Y Photo Reconnaissance Liberators on a photo mission in the South Pacific , April 15, 1944.

PhoM1c E.S. Ujvarosy and PhoM1c R.M. Rhodes check their cameras, magazines, and data sheets before taking off on a mission in a Navy PB4Y photo reconnaissance plane. Cameras, left to right: F56-40”, two K-18’s 24”, K-17-12” and a K-17-06”. Lying on its side is vertical view finder. April 15, 1944.

The US 15th Air Force sent 500 sorties to Bucharest and Ploesti. The war had reached the point where the Western Allies air attacks were now directly assisting the Soviet offensive in the east.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, February 24, 1944. Big Week Climax.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, February 24, 1944. Big Week Climax.:

Thursday, February 24, 1944. Big Week Climax.

B-26 “Marauder” bomber roars over Luftwaffe airfield at Leeuwarden, Holland, February 24, 1944.

The Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha) aircraft plant was hit as part of the Big Week.

The plant had been targeted for February 22, but bad weather had prevented the raid from occurring. On this day, 239 B-24s raided the plant.

Typical for such things, the US Army Air Force regarded the raid as a huge success. In reality, however, the lead bombardier, who controlled the run ins via the Norden Bomb site, suffered from anoxia due to a faulty oxygen mask and mistook Eisenach as the primary target. Forty-three bombers accordingly followed his error. Thirty-four B-24s were shot down, twenty-nine were damaged. Three aircrewmen were killed, six wounded and 324 went missing. 169 bombers did get through, and the plant was heavily damaged.

The Messerschmidt plants at Regensburg and Augsburg were hit and heavily damaged as well. Production was disrupted, but as Albert Speer noted, the damage was to the frame plant which was quickly put back into production. Had the engine plant been hit, results would have been different.

It was the climax of The Big Week.

The U-761 was sunk by tow U.S. Navy PBY's assisted by two Royal Navy destroyers.

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claims the life of Gen. Andrews.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claim...:

Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claims the life of Gen. Andrews.

Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews, for whom Andrews Air Force Base is named, died in the crash of the B-24 Hot Stuff in Iceland, when it went down in bad weather.

He had been on an inspection tour in the United Kingdom.

Only the plane's tail gunner, SSgt George A. Eisel, survived the crash. Eisel had survived a previous B-24 crash in North Africa. He'd live until 1964 when he died at age 64. Married prior to the war, he and his wife never had any children.

Hot Stuff was the first B-24D to complete 25 missions, well before, it might be noted, the B-17 Memphis Belle did the same. Hardly anyone recalls Hot Stuff, as the Army went on to emphasize the Memphis Belle following the crash of Hot Stuff and the death of all but one of its crew. Of note, Hot Suff, predictably, had a much more salacious example of nose art than Memphis Belle, and it's interesting to speculate how the Army would have handled that had the plane been popularized. At any rate, the story that Memphis Belle was the first US bomber to complete 25 missions is a complete myth.

Andrews was the CO of the ETO at the time of this death. A West Point Graduate from the class of 1906, he had been in the cavalry branch from 1906 to 1917, when he was assigned to aviation over the objection of his commander. A prior objection had prevented his reassignment in 1914.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 4, 1943. Airborne tragedies.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 4, 1943. Airborne tragedies.:

Sunday, April 4, 1943. Airborne tragedies.

Today in World War II History—April 4, 1943: Mrs. Thomas Sullivan christens destroyer USS The Sullivans in honor of her five sons killed in the sinking of light cruiser USS Juneau in November 1942.

So reports Sarah Sundin, who also notes that the US II Corps took Hill 369 near El Guettar and that POWs escaped from the Japanese penal colony on Davoa point. Their escape would break the news of the Bataan Death March, particularly through POW William Dyess.

William Dyess.

Dyess was returned to flying status but would suffer a mechanically stricken aircraft over California, while taking off, that following December and chose to ride the plane down as it was over a populated area. He died in the crash.

On the tragic aircraft loss theme, I guess, a B-25 went down over Lake Murray, South Carolina on this day, but the entire crew survived. The nearly intact B-25 was raised in 2005 in excellent condition.

1Lt. W.J. Hatton, pilot; 2Lt. R.F. Toner, copilot; 2Lt. D.P. Hays, navigator; 2Lt. J.S. Woravka, bombardier; TSgt. H.J. Ripslinger, engineer; TSgt. R.E. LaMotte, radio operator; SSgt. G.E. Shelly, gunner; SSgt. V.L. Moore, gunner; and SSgt. S.E. Adams, gunner. Crew of the Lady Be Good.

Not so fortunate was the crew of Lady Be Good, a B-24. It disappeared on its return from a bombing raid on Italy, having taken off from an airbase in Libya, which is interesting to consider as North Africa was still subject to fighting on the ground.

The plane grossly overshot its base and was found in 1958 by a British Petroleum crew some 400 plus miles inland. The bodies were recovered, save for one, two years later after a search. The crew clearly bailed out once they realized, far too late, they were deeply lost and that the plane would go down. They appear to have survived the parachute descent but died in the desert. The one remaining crewman was likely found by a British patrol over the borderline with Libya in 1953, but was unaware of whom the crewman was, as the plane had been thought to have crashed over the Mediterranean.

A minor incident, it's recalled simply because of the mystery of what occurred to the crew. Worth recalling as part of that, and contrary to how this is often portrayed in film, many American aircrews were extremely green early on in the war, as in fact this crew was. This contributed to an extremely high accident rate.

German radio announced that Former Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier and Léon Blum, and former French Army commander in chief, General Maurice Gamelin, had turned over to the Germans by French authorities. They would spend the rest of the war in Buchewald.

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: March 28, 1941. Ford's Willow Run plant commences operations.

Lex Anteinternet: March 28, 1941. Royal Navy victory in the Mediter...:

March 28, 1941. Royal Navy victory in the Mediterranean, manufacturing victory in Detroit.

B-24s being built at Willow Run.

Ford Motor Company began building B-24s components at Air Force Plant 31 in Michigan. The plant is better known as the Willow Run plant. Ultimately it would construct entire aircraft, something that was not foreign to Ford which had manufactured civilian aircraft prior to the war. The facility was actually leased, rather than owned, by Ford, which had an option to purchase it. It would decline that option post war.

The plant was taken over by Kaiser after the war, a Ford competitor, which manufactured automobiles there until the Korean War, at which time it also manufactured C-119 cargo aircraft. Kaiser was formed in July 1945, so it was a post war startup, and was originally the Kaiser-Frazer Company. It technically lasted only until 1953, but it didn't disappear at that time but merged with Willys Overland, whose forte at that time were its 4x4 vehicles, lead by the Jeep. It sold Willys to American Motors in 1970, but retained a minority interest in that company. American Motors continues in operation today, contrary to the common assumption, as AM General, the manufacturer of the military and civilian variants of the Hummer.

It was a bad day for the Italians in the Battle of Matapan as a heavy cruiser and two destroyers were sunk by the Royal Navy. More on that here:

Today in World War II History—March 28, 1941

Italian fleet surprised at ‘The Battle of Matapan’

On the same day, the Italians suffered further losses in Eritrea.

Day 575 March 28, 1941

King Peter assumed the Yugoslavian throne to cheering crowds.

Friday, October 4, 2019

Is it time to stop flying the old ones? The B-17 Nine-0-Nine Crashes

I've been in quite a few B-17s and ridden on one. If you go back and look through the posts here you'll find photographs of them.

Two of those B-17s were the Nine 0 Nine and the Liberty Belle.

The Nine 0 Nine.

Both are now gone.* The Nine O Nine crashed this week at a demonstration, killing ten people including some who had paid to ride in the old classic bomber.

I'm generally not inclined to tell people what to do with their own property. That's not something that squares with my own world view, nor with what we might generally call "American Values", although increasingly there are plenty of Americans who are ready to tell other Americans exactly what they can and cannot do with all sorts of things. And I'm not of the view that merely because something is old, it shouldn't be used. I use plenty of old things myself, including driving on occasion an old truck that probably some feel shouldn't be driven due to its age.

Nine O Nine.

But few of us have something that's an historical treasure. Once all of the flyable models of any one aircraft are done for, and the law of averages alone will bring that day upon us, more likely than not, there are none left and the history associated with them is gone as well.

B-17s weren't made to fly for 70 years.

Indeed, nothing made in the 30s or 40s that flew or rolled was. Simply nothing was expected to last that long.

While most B-17s were made in the 1940s, during World War Two, the plane's first flight was in 1935. In 1935 when the plane first flew flight itself was only 32 years in existence. That's over 80 years ago now, and if we look back the other way, eighty years prior, people were not only not flying, they weren't driving either.

Trains didn't last for eighty years. Wagons certainly didn't. Automobiles, when they first came out, tended to be used up very quickly, in spite of their vast expense. And airplanes cycled through generations incredibly quickly.

View from the now gone Liberty Belle.

The first "heavy" bombers came into existence during World War One, but just as with fighter aircraft, the bombers of mid war were already obsolete by the end of the war. The first U.S. bombers to have the "B" designation (fighters had a "P" designation, for "pursuit") came into service in the 1920s and exited service nearly as quickly as they entered. The fact that the U.S. Army Air Corps was up to the number "17" with the B-17 shows us how very quickly they cycled through the service.

The heavy aircraft that came into military service with the US largely made it through World War Two. None the less, there's no doubt that aircraft like the B-17 and the B-18 were obsolescent by the time World War Two started, already primitive in comparison to aircraft like the B-24. They were kept in production not because they were first rate modern aircraft at that time, but because it was necessary. Save for odd uses, as soon as the war was over, they were phased out of service. For that matter, the aircraft that made them obsolescent were already obsolescent themselves. In terms of heavy bombers, which were really something that only the United States and the United Kingdom fielded, the world had gone from the aircraft of the mid 1930s, to the those of the late 30s and early 40s, to the B-29, which made them all obsolete. And the B-29 would only remain a first rate bomber until the late 1940s when jet powered bombers made their appearance. The B-36 had its first flight in 1946. The B-47 in 1947. The B-52 in 1952.

The B-52 is still in Air Force use, and will be for the foreseeable future. It will be, most likely, the first military aircraft to see 100 years of continual use. But it was built in a completely different era. Vastly more expensive than the B-17, which entered service less than 20 years prior to the B-52, it was designed to be flown by men who would have college educations and who were already use to a technical world. The B-17 was designed to be flown by farm boys who were used to tractors and made the Model A.

There's no earthly way that the designers and builders of the B-17 imagined them flying for 70 to 80 years. Chances are, they didn't see them flying for more than ten. During World War Two, those savvy to aircraft development didn't see a future for aircraft like the B-17 beyond the end of the war and, had they been quietly asked, would have already regarded it as obsolete. It only had to offer its crew a chance of living through their tour.

And the fact that it did offer such a chance is why there remain any around today. They were rugged.

But they weren't built to fly forever. And the flying ones will not. The time has come to let them rest, while there are still any left that are capable of flight.

That is sad. The fact that they still fly from town to town allows people to see them who would otherwise never get the chance. But the end conclusion to continuing to allow them to fly seems evident.

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To add to this sad tale, I've also been in an HE-111 that crashed later. And I've viewed a P-51 which did.