The Consolidated B-24 Liberator

As you have read before, Dick was the pilot of a B-24 bomber. It’s hard to believe that at the age of 27 (in 1943), he commanded this airplane, led a crew of nine people, and held responsibilities of such magnitude. (Read in the first blog posting, “My Father in World War II,” the description of their flying formation after take off.) You will remember that his original airplane, the one he flew from the United States to Europe was named the "Nita-Lynn." Red McCrocklin said that when they arrived in Italy, a high-ranking officer commandeered the "Nita-Lynn" because it was in good shape. My father and his crew were assigned the "The Miss Zeke," which was not in great shape and was the plane they were were flying the day they were shot down. 

“The (B-24) airplane was 66 feet long, 18 feet high, and has a 110-food wingspan. Four Pratt & Whitney engines drove it; fully loaded, with more than 8,000 pounds of bombs, it weighed 80,000 pounds. The plane had a ceiling of 32,000 feet, a top speed of slightly more than 300 miles per hour, and a range of 2,850 miles. It defended its self with ten .50 caliber machine guns.” Americans built more B-24s than any other airplane ever. (description from the book “The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany” by Stephen E. Ambrose)

The B-24 played a key role in the Allied strategic bombing campaign of World War II. According to Laura Hillenbrand’s book, “Unbroken,” “Flat-faced, rectangular, and brooding, the B-24 had looks only a myopic mother could love. Crewmen gave it a host of nicknames, among them ‘the Flying Brick,’ ‘the Flying Boxcar,’ and ‘the Constipated Lumberer,’ a play on Consolidated Liberator.”  She goes on to say, “The cockpit was oppressively cramped, forcing pilot and copilot to live check by jowl for missions as long as sixteen hours. Craning over the mountainous control panel, the pilot had a panoramic view of his plane’s snout and not much else . . . A pilot once wrote that the first time he got into a B-24 cockpit, ‘it was like sitting on the front porch and flying the house.’ (I can imagine what my father said the first time he got in the cockpit) . . . Flying it was like wrestling a bear, leaving pilots weary and sore. . . (I saw what the inside of a B-24 looked like in the movie, "Unbroken." It seemed pretty scary with a large open space for the bombs.) (When under enemy fire) the Norden bombsight, not the pilot, flew the plane . . . The risks of combat created grim statistics. In World War II, 52,173 Army Air Corps men were killed in combat.”

Hillenbrand continues, “Taxiing was an adventure. The B-24’s wheels had no steering, so the pilot had to cajole the bomber along by feeding power to one side’s engines, then the other, and working back and forth on the left and right brakes, one of which was usually much more sensitve then the other. This made the taxiways a pageant of lurching planes, all of which sooner or later, ended up veering into places nowhere near where their pilots intended them to go, and from which they often had to be extricated with shovels.”

When my parents married, my father took the civilian pilot training course at the Hot Spring Airport. He had already agreed to join the Army Air Corps so he took the course to get advanced training, which lasted three or four months. He also worked for Arkansas Power & Light Company and did some surveying for a power line in Hot Springs. After that was over, he loaded groceries and drove a truck for my grandfather who had Stueart Grocery Co. warehouse. Of that experience, my father said, “I didn't anymore know how to drive truck than anyone.” And yet, he was able to fly the B-24 successfully on 12 missions and complete his bombing assignment on the 13^th.