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(U.S. Air Force photo)
More B-24 heavy bombers were built than any other American airplane
in history. The B- 24 was used in every theater in World War II, and it
had greater range and could carry a much larger bomb load than the B-17,
but it never had the notoriety of the Flying Fortress. Probably the most
famous B-24 was named Lady Be Good. On April 4, 1943, returning from a
bombing mission, it overshot its base at Soluch, Libya, and was not heard
from again. In 1959, the wreckage was found by an oil exploration party
440 miles into the Libyan desert. On August 1, 1943, staging from Benghazi,
Libya, 177 Ninth Air Force B-24 crews dropped 311 tons of bombs from low
level on the oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, during Operation Tidal
Wave. This was the first large-scale, minimum- altitude attack by Army
Air Forces heavy bombers on a strongly defended target. Five officers (Lt.
Col. Addison E. Baker, Col. Leon W. Johnson, Col. John R. Kane, Maj. John
L. Jerstad, and 2d Lt. Lloyd H. Hughes) were awarded the Medal of Honor
for this mission. More Air Force Medals of Honor were awarded for this
mission than any other in the service's history. The B-24 was also used
extensively by Britain. Almost 1,000 were used by the US Navy as PB4Ys.
A total of 6,678 B-24Js were built, starting in August 1943. One C-87,
the widely used cargo version of the Liberator, named Guess Where II, was
intended to be the first Presidential aircraft, although there is no evidence
that Franklin D. Roosevelt ever flew in it. B-24 operations were concentrated
in the Pacific, and the first Liberators went into action on November 16,
1943, at Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. There were 6,000 operational
B-24s in use by the end of 1944, equipping 45 groups. A year later, the
type was declared surplus and hundreds were scrapped virtually overnight.
The lone XB-24N was a single-tail test version. Approximately a dozen Liberators
remain today.
| Contractors: |
Consolidated Aircraft Co. |
| Douglas Aircraft Co. |
| Ford Motor Co. |
| North American Aviation, Inc. |
| Locations Built: |
San Diego, Calif., and Fort Worth, Tex. |
| Tulsa, Ok. |
| Willow Run, Mich. |
| Dallas, Tex. |
| Number Built: (USAF) |
18,481 (approx 16,300) |
| First Flight: |
December 29, 1939 |
| First Flight Model: |
XB-24 |
| First Flight Location: |
San Diego, Calif. |
| First Flight Pilot: |
Bill Wheatley |
| Models/Variants: |
B-24A, C, D, E, G, H, J, L, M. C-87, C-87A.
C-109. F-7, F-7A, B. AT- 22 (later redesignated TB-24D) |
| Powerplant: |
Four Pratt & Whitney R-1830-43 or -65
Twin Wasp 14-cylinder, twin-row radials of 1,200 hp each. |
| Wingspan: |
110 ft 0 in. |
| Length: |
67 ft 2 in. |
| Height: |
18 ft 0 in. |
| Weight: |
65,500 lb gross |
| Armament: |
10 .50-cal. machine guns—eight in four manned
electric turrets (nose, dorsal, ball, and tail) and two single guns in
the waist, plus 8,800 lb of bombs. |
| Accommodation: |
Crew of 10 normally (pilot, copilot, navigator,
bombardier, radio operator/top gunner, plus five other gunners) |
| Cost: |
$366,000 (B-24D) |
| Max. Speed: |
290 mph |
| Range: |
2,100 mi. |
| Ceiling: |
28,000 ft. |
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